The Art Lover’s Guide to Fort Worth, Texas
Long a destination for the art crowd, Fort Worth has experienced extraordinary growth over the last decade, and its hospitality offerings now reflect that momentum at every level. With travelers increasingly seeking out places bearing an authentic sense of region, Fort Worth is emerging as a destination where art and rowdiness not only coexist, but meaningfully collide.
Where
Where to Stay
Jo Ellard, the owner of Bowie House, can tell you the story of every piece of art and design that bejewels the boutique hotel she opened in Fort Worth in 2023. She picked everything—hand-selected from ranches, antique sales, and Art Basel alike. The result is a one-of-a-kind personality that has made the hotel the living room of Fort Worth. It is warm and dreamy and eclectic and storied—all the things Texan glamour promises. Ellard herself is not a born Texan—she’s from Mobile, Alabama—but she has captured a spirit that feels entirely at home here.
Working in partnership with Auberge Resorts Collection, she has turned the property into a place that feels like you’ve been invited to a deliriously wealthy aunt’s house. Each hallway reveals a new amenity: hot tubs, billiards, massages. You could get happily lost among them as you circumambulate in a fluffy bathrobe you pilfered from the spa, under the delusion that you might pull off a Texan Eloise-at-the-Plaza moment.
The bedrooms are pleasingly Texas-size (huge), with charming regional details like boot pulls and generous vanities. And the staff gives you the sense they would do anything to make you more comfortable, including driving you home from the bars if you avail yourself of the bottomless margaritas that seem to follow you from shop to shop.
The lobby bar is always buzzing. It has become a kind of de facto town square for the Fort Worth set, especially during rodeo season—an opportunity to dress up just to go downstairs. If you hold down a sofa with friends by the fire, you can watch the tides of cowboys wash in and out. And yes, there will be more margaritas.
Honorable Mentions
If Bowie House isn’t in budget, try the historic Stockyards Hotel or the minimalist accommodations at Hotel Dryce. Both are perfectly hospitable for out-of-towners.
Where to Eat
You’ll know you’re with real Fort Worth royalty if they put your meal on the family tab at Joe T. Garcia’s—which grew from a one-room BBQ pit into a labyrinthine compound famed for its two-item menu (fajitas or the enchilada dinner) and generous, see-and-be-seen terraces. Joe T.’s, as it’s affectionately known, is essential to any old-money land man cosplaying in Fort Worth.
If you are after a steakhouse experience, Bowie House’s in-house restaurant, Bricks and Horses, will scratch that itch. Ballard has nailed the big sunken chairs and wooden details that put one at ease in a red-blooded establishment, as well as the theatrical flourishes: tableside carvings, the silver cowboy-hat dish filled to the literal brim with caviar, and wheeled carts laden with treats that will make you spin around in your chair for another look. It is classic surf-and-turf fare, with pasta and to-die-for vegetable sides. No one will go home hungry.
Long before anyone called it a smash burger, Kincaid’s of Fort Worth was flipping its roadside-style patty out of modest, mint-green accommodations. Open since 1946, there is still often a wait. If you have the patience, you will get exactly the experience Fort Worthians have grown up with. The perfect counterweight to the bedazzled cowboy souvenir you’ve been eyeballing, a pilgrimage to Kincaid’s will impress the folks later at the honky-tonk.
Where to Shop
Perhaps the most storied cowboy boot brand, period—a stop into Leddy’s is essential even if you are just there to gawk. The custom cowboy boot shop has a cult-like following that ensures anything custom-made is years from arriving in your possession. The people who love Leddy’s are happy to wait. If you are okay with prolonged gratification, this could be where you get to shine best.
M.L. Leddy’s historic factory in San Angelo, Texas where their custom boots are built
If you don’t want the fuss of multiyear waitlists but do want all the bells and whistles, Lucchese is the outfitter for you. The storied bootmaker delivers custom boots in around a year, all while maintaining genuine handmade standards.
If you aren’t interested in going the bespoke route, they have styles for work and play—the entry point is low enough to justify on a whim. Just be warned: once you fall in love with your first pair of cowboy boots, it’s hard to go back to less forgiving footwear. At Lucchese, you’ll get Texan hospitality alongside a name that insiders (and outsiders) can agree on.
Another authentically Texan experience is getting fitted for a cowboy hat. We recommend a visit to The Best Hat Store in the Stockyards, where Susan Maddox and her daughters, Mercedes Maddox and Treasure Maddox, preside over a cult favorite.
You’ll be rubbing elbows with working rodeo folks as well as celebs like Post Malone, who have been known to hang out on the premises drinking Tecate with the owners and the guys who shape the hats.
Each piece is handmade, then steamed and sculpted to order—which means flipping through a catalogue of styles and deciding on brim angle, brim length, and the indentations on the crown. Don’t be afraid to go wild with finishes and colors. The experience is hard to replicate anywhere else.
Tucked inside Bowie House, Lela Rose is the perfectly curated last stop for the jet-set crowd passing through for rodeo season—and an equally rewarding find for any cowpoke who simply wandered in to inspect one of the incredible floral arrangements in the store.
The sun-flooded boutique excels in its namesake’s special outerwear pieces (think embroidery and tassels galore) and well-made basics, filling out the space with non-clothing treasures in between: antique Pueblo pottery, one-of-a-kind belt buckles—the kinds of objects that Round Top, Texas’s storied antique fair, yields once in a blue moon.
People will ask where you got it. Whether you tell them it was a hotel shop is entirely up to you.
What
What to See
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has an unmistakable spa-like atmosphere that makes it one of the most pleasant and contemplative contemporary art spaces in the country. Designed by Tadao Ando, the building—concrete and glass set on a reflecting pond—somehow feels more meditative than monumental.
Its collection lives up to the temple-like environs, with a strong emphasis on American heroes from Martin Puryear to Robert Rauschenberg. The sanctuary-like layout prioritizes major moments over quantity. Exhibitions tend to skew toward new American icons and frequently highlight works from the permanent collection alongside rotating loans—which can make for especially exciting viewing, depending on when you visit.
Texan collectors are world-renowned for their eclecticism, and that spirit is palpable throughout.
The Kimbell is, in many ways, the antiquities-focused sibling of The Modern. Designed by Louis Kahn, the building is a main character in the viewing experience—one that doesn’t overwhelm the art but quietly underlines and enhances it.
The daylight-filled galleries are Kahn’s masterstroke: the collection glows in a way no artificial lighting could replicate—an effect inspired by the nearby Stockyards Coliseum, where a dirt floor sits beneath its own open skylight (another must-stop for the architecturally inclined).
The collection at The Kimbell is as exquisite in its command of history as The Modern is in its pursuit of the current. You’ll find works you recognize from textbooks alongside euphoric surprises by painters you thought you knew too well.
Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of Frederick H. Hemming; Portrait of Mary Anne Bloxam (later Mrs. Frederick H. Hemming), c. 1824–25
The rodeo is the heart of Fort Worth. There is a season like the opera, as well as a look and a protocol—all of which add to the allure of a visit.
For the newly initiated, the most exciting part of the rodeo is learning the traditions and the cadence of the evening. For regulars, the new stadium provides an upgraded way to take in the experience.
Part of Museum Row, the Cowgirl Hall of Fame is an undercover gem that can be enjoyed by anyone. Brilliantly installed with a story to tell, this devoted temple to the cowgirl is a low-key hit.
How to Thank Them
Texans are famous for their hospitality. You might find yourself needing to thank one (or two) for nights that turned into cocktails in the backyard. We recommend ringing up Twelve Thirty Four, a local florist. They will get you right with local and exotic combinations that arrive as little sculptural marvels and will impress even the most discerning host in town.
When
Fort Worth is most alive during rodeo season, which runs through the winter and brings flocks of ranchers to the bars before and after the shows. It is a fashion show in and of itself, very enjoyable for those who have never participated. Does this mean this is Texas weather at its best? No, it does not. But the climate shouldn’t stop you from visiting.
The city thrives on the shoulder seasons—when it’s not too hot or too cold. Art lovers sufficiently committed to the bit should consider delaying until April and aligning their visit with nearby Dallas’s art week, where you can stop into town for an art fair or two. The Modern’s curators sometimes shop the selection, so don’t underestimate the value of the schlep.
