Just three blocks from Fountain Place, built two years later, the Dallas Museum of Art garden is a Modernist plaza designed by Dan Kiley. This pair of commissions in the city of Dallas may represent the only instance in an American city (aside from myriad projects in Columbus, Indiana) where two Kiley designs were realized and survive today.

The museum, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, opened in 1984. It was conceived not only to set the stage for the art, but also to include an outdoor sculpture garden and interior courtyards, melding the indoors and the outdoors. The garden was conceived as a sequence of outdoor rooms reinforced by a geometric grid of oaks and other plantings.

The open-air sculpture court, enclosed by perimeter walls, was designed to be a “lively pedestrian environment and distinctive urban setting.” Its three distinct garden rooms-- the Tribal Court, the Dining Terrace and Wisteria Court-- are defined by three freestanding water walls (designed by Allistair Bevington of Barnes’ firm), each with cascading water rushing downward into narrow canals from which the water is recycled. The gardens display a diverse collection of sculpture including works by Barbara Hepworth, Ellsworth Kelly, and Aristide Maillol.