I'm spending this Easter weekend at home in Dallas with my family. Its so nice to be home! The weather is rainy and cold, but its still going to be a day full of food and family. We're heading out to have the big lunch with the family later..

Yesterday we had a very typical day for my family - an early breakfast at La Madeleine, followed by the weekly trip to Central Market to pick up ingredients for dinner. Then we hopped in the car for the short hop over to Fort Worth to see the National Cowgirl Museum and the Kimbell Art Museum.

The Cowgirl Museum was filled with paraphernalia and stories of the women who survived in the American west - including Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who grew up on a ranch in Arizona, and who served as ribbon-cutter at the museum's opening ceremonies. I liked that the museum focused on the archetype of the cowgirl as well as the stories of individual women.

I've been to the Kimbell before, but it is always inspiring to see their fantastic collection. Sometimes much larger museums can be overwhelming, with whole wings of paintings from the various eras. I get a sense that they are competing with each other to have the largest collections, the most famous paintings, etc, but the quality and impact of the museum suffers. The Kimbell is smaller, but their collection feels edited and refined, and each item hanging on the wall is really interesting and valuable in its own way. There are long descriptions on the wall for each piece, which tell you a lot about where the painting fits within the artists body of work, but also the political context of the painting's subject. Its not often that you stop, look, and spend 5-10 minutes per painting in a place like the National Gallery in DC, but the Kimbell offers that kind of experience.

Our secondary reason for visiting the Kimbell is that we had a copy of "My Architect" sitting at home waiting to be watched. "My Architect" is a documentary following Nathanial Khan, son of Louis I. Khan, as he attempts to understand his elusive father by visiting all of his great buildings throughout the world. One of these just happens to be the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. I have always believed that place, and the structures that surround us, can have great impact on our lives, and this movie was really built on that premise. Not only did the people who now use his buildings speak of this, but the cinematography allowed the buildings to speak for themselves.