The museum was built on a sliver of a site between the San Angelo River Walk and the S. Orient Street pedestrian concourse, which cascades to Celebration Bridge across the North Concho River to downtown. The museum is composed of three masses configured in a long, thin rectangular bar, with the main body of the museum beneath a striking sway-back barrel roof. Its walls are faced in limestone from a quarry near Garden City. The blocks, measuring about 4 x 2 feet, are set in alternating bands of smooth, pale stone and weathered, discolored blocks cut from the quarry surface (a treatment first used a decade earlier by Gary M. Cunningham in his Cistercian Abbey Church [GF4] near Irving).
At the building’s south end facing Avenue A, a two-story wing that accommodates art studios has walls of alternating bands of smooth-faced and split-faced cream-colored concrete masonry units. The north end of the building, curved to face the River Walk, has a similar wing. This houses some of the museum’s gallery space, along with rooms for lectures, concerts, and public events.
Kinney Franke’s landscaping, with lawns and native plants, also facilitates access to the River Walk (2013). San Angelo artists Val Hague, Melodie McDonald, Joan Mertz, and Joe Morgan contributed various public art installations under the direction of tile artists Julie Raymond and Sue Rainey.