🪞 A Glass Tower's Glare Waged War on a Sculpture Garden

When the 42-story Museum Tower opened next to the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2011, its curved glass facade reflected concentrated sunlight directly onto the museum's Renzo Piano–designed garden and gallery roof. The heat scorched plantings, forced curators to move works — including a Picasso — indoors to protect them, and knocked out a site-specific James Turrell skyspace, whose open view of the sky the tower now permanently intruded on. A mediator brought in to broker a fix resigned after both sides rejected every proposed remedy, from tinting the tower's windows to erecting a 400-foot freestanding shade structure, and the dispute quietly ended with no resolution at all — the glare is simply still there.

Klyde Warren Park carries the name of a boy who was nine years old when it opened. Pipeline executive Kelcy Warren made a lead gift toward building the deck park over Woodall Rodgers Freeway and used the naming rights not for himself but for his young son. The arrangement came with one unusual condition: as part of the naming agreement, Klyde himself is obligated to help pick up litter in the park once a month — possibly the only namesake in the country contractually bound to clean his own park.