The 10 Best Ways to See Free Art in Austin

Image via Complex Original

The East Austin Studio tour is a free, public, and entirely self-guided tour that includes more than 400 artists in East Austin. The attendance over its two weekends in the fall makes it the single largest arts event in Austin. Pick up a map and guide and visit working studios, some of which are artists' homes, to see both finished works and works in progress. Galleries also participate and there are premium events, but the studio tour is EAST's defining feature as locals walk from studio to studio seeing art and meeting artists. 

The Texas State Capitol is open to the public, free to visitors year round, and is home to a great deal of historic Texas art. The architectural features, like the rotunda's terrazzo floor, provide a focal point in the entrance, and the round walls are hung with portraits of former governors—the lineage goes in reverse order chronologically, starting at the ground floor and spiraling up to the fourth floor. Elisabet Ney sculptures of the state's founding fathers frame the entryway. The Senate and House galleries have paintings of famous Texans and historical scenes, and photographic composites of legislators. 

Elisabet Ney immigrated to Texas from Germany and built her studio, Formosa, in the Austin, neighborhood of Hyde Park, during 1892. Today, the building occupies park-like grounds in the middle of one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. Characteristic of the freethinking Germans who came to the Hill Country, Ney held beliefs ahead of her time, with little patience for traditional gender roles or fashion. She was an acclaimed portrait sculptor and was commissioned to produce statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The museum hosts her work and changing exhibits, and is free to the public. 

Close to Zilker Park is the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, home to dozens of works given to the city by sculptor and University of Texas at Austin professor Charles Umlauf. Umlauf and his wife, Angeline, donated the home, studio, and works to the city in 1985 and the museum was built in 1991. It is a serene landscape in the middle of the city, where art and landscape features complement each other. For the last two summers, the garden and museum have been free to the public, and free family days and seminars are held on the grounds. 

The Blanton Museum of Art is the University of Texas'—and by extension Austin’s—flagship museum. Completed in 2008, the current building was the center of some controversy at the University—conflict between the Board of Regents and an architectural firm led to the resignation of the school's Dean of Architecture. Today's Blanton holds the finest collection in Austin, nearly 18,000 works and exhibitions of contemporary artists and classic masters rotate through regularly. The sunlit, arched atrium's blue-striped walls are themselves a permanent installation, Stacked Waters by Teresita Fernández. Every Thursday, admission is free. 

On the last Sunday in September, more than 40 art, history, and culture museums in Austin, are open to the public free of charge. Visitors can take advantage of sites all across town, from The Contemporary Austin at Laguna Gloria's historic villa and sculpture park, to the Pump Project's galleries and studios. Other participants cover a range of interests. Those interested in the finer points of aural art on tape can examine the Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording, or there’s Pioneer Farms, which features a working blacksmith's shop. 

Right in the middle of Austin’s busy downtown business district is this museum dedicated to Mexican and Latino art, where it has stood for several decades as many surrounding tenants have been forced out. The modest entrance leads to a space full of changing exhibits and a popular gift shop. Admission is free every Sunday and for the entire month of December, which suits its status as a perennial favorite for holiday shoppers. 

UT's acclaimed Ransom Center is an archive, library, and museum that frequently exhibits art from its holdings in addition to treasures from the Ransom archives, including a Gutenberg Bible and the collections of dozens of notable writers, designers, and artists. Currently, the center is showing an exhibition of the works of Southwestern Impressionist Frank Reaugh. The Gutenberg and the first photograph ever taken, by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, are also permanently on display, and admission is always free. 

The Contemporary Austin is Austin’s main contemporary-art museum and school. It is actually two locations, the Jones Center and Laguna Gloria, which now operate under one name. The Jones Center is downtown and is a glassy-gallery space that features visiting exhibitions by contemporary artists. The Laguna Gloria is the former residence of noted Austinite Clara Driscoll, on the shores of Lake Austin. Its grounds are home to Driscoll's Italianate villa, the Contemporary's art school, and a sculpture park. Both have free admission on Tuesdays. 

At Baylor and 11th streets, an undeveloped lot in Castle Hill has been transformed into one of the city’s most colorful spots by the HOPE Outdoor Gallery, where muralists, street artists, and guerilla artists make vibrant works on what were once abandoned-construction remnants. In 2011 the Helping Other People Everywhere nonprofit took an interest in the vacant property, and talked the owners into allowing it to be used as a graffiti gallery for a year. Four years later, the gallery just off a busy stretch of North Lamar Boulevard, is a popular landmark and the subject of a coffee-table book. It is also open to the public.