The UMLAUF’s Getting Way Bigger

The plan is funded by the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden & Museum, the Austin Parks Foundation, and Nelie Plourde (courtesy of Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum)

Before he died, sculptor Charles Umlauf and his wife Angie arranged to have the house they’d lived in for more than 50 years gifted to the city of Austin. The couple wanted the house, perched on a bluff overlooking Barton Creek and the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum below, to be opened as a gallery for Umlauf’s work.

But since Charles’ passing in 1994, and Angie’s in 2012, the house and its adjacent studio have remained closed to the public. Now, the UMLAUF is in the midst of a campaign to make the original vision a reality.

The nonprofit organization, headquartered on 6 tree-shaded acres adjacent to the Umlaufs’ home, wants to stitch the two properties together through its UMLAUF Historic Preservation, Expansion, and Unification Plan. The plan was recently endorsed by the city’s Arts and Historic Landmark commissions and is being presented to the Environmental and Design commissions this week. The UMLAUF’s Amanda Valbracht told us it’ll appear before the Parks and Recreation Board in September and, hopefully, will be taken up by City Council shortly thereafter.

“We’re in the sharing phase right now,” Valbracht said. “We’re sharing it with as many people as we can and getting the word out. Then we will go into a fundraising phase in the next year.”

The UMLAUF solicited design proposals for the project last year, selecting the Page architectural firm’s plan to landscape the property and build a multi-level, 4,700-square-foot structure called the Treehouse into the side of the bluff. The Treehouse will integrate the home and studio with the existing sculpture garden, Valbracht said, solving the problem of getting visitors up to the home and studio, which sit 45 vertical feet above the sculpture garden with an exhilarating view of Downtown.

“It is really beautiful,” Valbracht said of the property. “I’ve been inside the home quite a bit. It was renovated in the 1950s, so it’s very midcentury modern. And the studio is basically just how it looked when Charles Umlauf was using it. So all of his tools and workbenches and shipping crates and fragments of art are scattered around.”

Umlauf is regarded as one of the most significant artists Austin has produced. He finished hundreds of pieces over his 50-year career, has more sculptures on view in Texas than any other artist, and has work in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Museum, and every major museum in the state.

The UMLAUF owns over 2.000 drawings and 273 sculptures by Umlauf, only 59 of which are displayed in the existing gallery and sculpture garden. Valbracht said the 4,700 square feet of exhibition space created by the Treehouse will let the UMLAUF present many of these pieces to the public. She believes visitors will be thrilled to stand inside the house and studio where Umlauf lived his life and created his art.

“I think the most interesting part of our project is getting the home and studio open to the public, since that was the original gift that Charles and Angie gave to the city,” Valbracht said. “It was their vision that the home and studio would be accessible and there would be sculpture there. And they’re very inspiring spaces to be in. So I think that is going to be very impactful for the community to be able to see where the artist worked and lived. And to have a home and studio on the same site as a public museum is really rare, so it’s a huge asset that Austin is able to offer.”

Editor' Note Thursday, Aug. 22, 1:11pm: This story previously misspelled Amanda Valbracht’s name. The Chronicle regrets the error.