During Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, a friend and I visited the Blanton Art Museum. While she was researching for an IB project concerning modern art, I tagged along for the adventure. Well, as much adventure as you can have in a museum, that is.

The Blanton Art Museum is nestled in the University of Texas at Austin’s campus, and is composed of two buildings – one with artwork, one with a rather small gift store and tiny auditoriums for speakers and meetings between board members. It was only $5 for entry for those under 21 who weren’t UT students. Typical art museum tickets range anywhere from $15 to $60. To say the least, I already enjoyed the Blanton immensely, and we hadn’t even stepped foot into a gallery.

After trudging up a long, pearlescent white staircase – which appeared to us as if the staircase was art in itself – we found ourselves in a maze of galleries ranging from abstract art filled with dots to Baroque portraits of Catholic saints and martyrs, and Texan/Southwestern art styles to Grecian urns, bowls, and vases. Artists like Fernando Botero, Yayoi Kusama, and Jan Brueghel the Elder decorated the walls. My friend and I agreed that Mission/Missions [How to Build Cathedrals] by Cildo Meireles, an installation made of 600,000 pennies, 2,000 suspended cattle bones, and 800 communion wafers, was by far our favorite part.

To be fair, it only really takes an hour and a half to tour the galleries. Although their collection is small compared to major cities around the United States, the Blanton still has amazing pieces. If you enjoy art or have free time to spend on the UT Austin campus, it’s definitely worth checking out the Blanton Art Museum.

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia and the Blanton Art Museum.