Museums & Galleries in Leon Valley

“It’s the rare visitor who won't discover here that his or her ethnic group has contributed to the history of Texas,” noted the New York Times in its description of the Institute of Texan Cultures. The 26 different ethnic and cultural groups represented at the educational center incline one to agree with the Times. The article went on to list the institute as a top San Antonio attraction due to its “imaginative, hands-on displays” and kid-friendly features, including an adobe home and one-room schoolhouse. Along with heritage festivals and other events, the institute features both long-term and rotating exhibits, as well as a photo archive with more than three million images.

Like the intrepid cowboys and pioneers it honors, the Frontier Times Museum boasts a backstory rife with tall tales and valiant triumphs. It all started in the late 1920, when writer and publisher J. Marvin Hunter began selling newspapers and magazines that recounted the sagas of the storied Old West. Readers enthralled by the sagas would send in relics to exemplify these stories, filling Hunter's small office to the brim. By 1933, his publications had brought in just enough funds to build the Frontier Times Museum, which has been properly flaunting the goldmine of baubles at the site ever since. The ensuing decades have yielded thousands of visitors and multiple expansions.

Today, the nonprofit museum pays homage to the fabled pioneer period right down to its very framework, with parts of the building constructed using stones from the surrounding pastures. Iconic histories are illustrated through roughly 40,000 artifacts, which populate a menagerie of display cases, shelves, and rocky walls. A wander through the labyrinth of exhibits reveals frontier-era vestiges such as fireplaces, paintings, phonographs, and fossils, with a smattering of trinkets from Europe, Asia, and South America punctuating the collection. Even J. Marvin Hunter's legacy lives on in an old-fashioned printing press.

Founded in 1954 and featured in the Wall Street Journal, the McNay Art Museum rests on the 23-acre estate of the late art collector Marion Koogler McNay and boasts a collection of nearly 20,000 works of early and modern art, as well as the New Image Sculpture exhibit (running until May 8) and Sandy Skoglun's installation The Cocktail Party (running until May 8).

Since its inception 25 years ago, Blue Star Contemporary Art Center continues to fill San Antonio’s contemporary art void, gaining attention from visitors and artists around the world and a spot on San Antonio magazine’s Best of the City 2011 list. A family membership bestows a wealth of benefits to patrons, including 10% off at applicable area restaurants, 10% off Blue Star merchandise, and entrance to exclusive openings, lectures, and black-tie water-gun battles. Discover an ever-rotating and ever-innovative lineup of exhibits including Four Decades with Colour—running until mid-February—which billets more than 20 pieces by sculptor-painter Philip King. Meanwhile, Untitled showcases works by British abstract sculptor and Texas convert Philip John Evett. Form and structure reign supreme at the center, which displays an arsenal of abstract forms that guests can circle, study, and recreate with mashed potatoes during dinner.