The Modern boasts a landmark design by the celebrated, yes, modernist Japanese architect Tadao Ando; it's a real notch on the city's belt. Opened in 2002, the museum and quickly hailed as a masterpiece, it contains over 50,000 square feet of gallery space, making it second in size only to the Museum of Modern Art in New York among museums dedicated to contemporary and modern art. The galleries, of warmly textured poured concrete with 20-foot-high ceilings and suffused with spectacular natural light, are housed in three rectangular, flat-roofed pavilions built around a large pond. In fact the oldest art museum in Texas (chartered in 1892), the Modern possesses an impressive permanent collection of modern and contemporary paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by Picasso, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol,Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter,  and Jackson Pollock, as well as an impressive contemporary photography collection. A sculpture by Martin Puryear, Ladder for Booker T. Washington, proves very popular with kids; it's a two-story wooden ladder reaching to the ceiling, ever-so-narrow at the top. Another piece not to miss is Ron Mueck's stunningly lifelike and creepy Seated Woman. The outdoor sculpture collection includes large-scale works by Tony Cragg, George Segal, and Antony Gormley and a massive piece walk-inside piece by Richard Serra. Plan to spend at least a couple of hours here, especially if a notable special exhibition is taking place (in 2014, the blockbuster was a collection of 1980's work from New York City that included all the stars of that era from Robert Maplethorpe to Cindy Sherman to Keith Haring.