The San Antonio Museum of Art holds a unique title: it’s the only accredited art museum in the country housed in what was originally a brewery. That’s the focus of their latest summer exhibition, Still Brewing Art, which takes visitors on an eye-opening journey through the museum’s “heady past” as the Lone Star Brewery.
Still Brewing Art is on view in the museum’s Cowden Gallery through Sept. 3, revealing a treasure trove of artifacts safeguarded by community members over the last 140 years of the building’s rich timeline. The exhibition invites visitors to explore the intersection of architecture, art and community while delving into San Antonio’s history as a brewing city.
A wall-sized timeline presented within the exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the events that shaped the Lone Star Brewery’s transformation from its beginnings as the first large, mechanized brewery in the state of Texas, to now housing SAMA’s art collections.
“The exhibit is the perfect exemplar of the uniqueness that San Antonio has to offer,” said Emily Ballew Neff, the museum’s Kelso director.
Rare pre-Prohibition era objects, historic photographs and Belle Époque large-format brewery posters abound, providing a visual narrative of the brewery’s evolution and offering something for everyone from art historians and enthusiasts to casual beer lovers.
However, the true star of the show is the concept of adaptive reuse. This process of repurposing existing, often abandoned buildings into entirely new spaces was relatively new when the San Antonio Museum Association proposed transforming the old Lone Star Brewery into an art museum.
Cambridge Seven Associates, a leading architectural firm in the 1970s, preserved the brewery’s industrial interiors while adding new elements. The result is a seamless blend of old and new, with barrel-vaulted ceilings, floral motif columns and glass elevators offering panoramic views. Overland Partners, a local architecture and urban design firm, also contributed to SAMA’s growth, including the Latin American Cultural Center, Asian Art Wing, and Gloria Gal River Landing.
Now, more than 40 years since opening, SAMA remains an example of how impactful adaptive reuse can be. The success of SAMA’s adaptive reuse project paved the way for other significant revitalization efforts in San Antonio, including the repurposing of the San Antonio Arsenal as H-E-B’s corporate headquarters.
SAMA’s campus now acts as a time capsule for San Antonio history and an example of what is possible with the right imagination. It also highlights something close to the heart of San Antonio’s culture: the idea of using the resources we have to create something only few can imagine.
Still Brewing Art Sept. 3. Tickets can be purchased on the San Antonio Museum of Art website.
