Kimbell Trees are Historic, We Mean Dying

I went by the Kimbell Museum again today and saw the progression of the construction activity. It appears we’ve moved passed the destruction phase and its clear now why the trees couldn’t stay. The hole is so deep they would probably have destroyed the root structure anyway. It was amusing reading an item in Fort Worth Weekly about the tree controversy, however. The Kimbell originally called the trees “historic” and said the they would be preserved, then later referred to them as “unhealthy and near the end of their life expectancy.” Convenient. More telling is the quote that “They will be replaced by trees of a scale originally intended for the building.” It’s as if the building’s architect Louis Kahn had no expectation trees would grow! Moreover a later quote seems contradictory even to that saying the trees would be replaced with ones of similar size. The quotes are from Charles Birnbaum, president of the Washington, D.C-based Cultural Landscape Foundation. See the trees that have been removed. See more photos of the Kimbell and Expansion.