DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA—"It all started with a column I wrote for the Duke Chronicle back in 1942," quips Ray Nasher, the demure namesake of the new Nasher Museum at Duke University. As a unique project sixty-three years in the making, it's not surprising that patience was the virtue repeatedly noted throughout the day's celebrations, of a collector whose singular dedication to sculpture has resulted in one of the finest private collections of modern and contemporary works—and now a landmark university art museum.

"The Nashers have been brilliant at negotiating all the conflicts that have come up throughout the years, and maintaining their conviction, their goal of building this museum," noted architect Rafael Viñoly. Stepping into the sunlight filled piazza of Viñoly's building—its roof structure an object lesson in formal brilliance-cum-function—or strolling through the myriad highlights of the unique Nasher collection on view, everyone was sure glad he was patient.

The Nasher Museum replaces the University's previous museum, housed in a former science building, which Nasher describes as a "good start, but inadequate to the ambitions of the institution." The long wait for this new museum involved finding the perfect site, a sprawling park setting, both centrally and symbolically located between the University's two campuses. Besides the ongoing conversation about building requirements, and the need for a perfect, permanent site, there were the weeds to consider. "There were weeds on the site that were part of a doctoral thesis, so we had to wait," Nasher smirked.

Five 'platonic' pavilions arrayed around a central courtyard bathed in natural light—with no direct formal entrance—the Nasher Museum's permeable form follows the contour of the site, transforming the building into a kind of continuation of its garden setting, designed by the Olmsted brothers. "The museum, like a gang of people independent from each other—totally square as they say — but dancing in the middle of the garden," says Viñoly of his new building.

The result is a museum that emphasizes the Nashers' goal of providing a gateway for the arts, a mission they have pursued not only through collecting, but through the use of their real estate developments as suburban village greens. Nasher was one of the first real estate developers in the U.S to place art in commercial complexes. "Where else in Texas could you see a Borofsky sculpture, but in one of Ray's mall squares…on the highway?" noted one ebullient Nasher board member. In 2003, Nasher also launched the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.

Viñoly's design for the museum is a combination of purpose, function, and structural brilliance, combining the strict architectural requirements of a museum with a material embodiment of its civic function for Duke and the community. "Smart and successful," said one visitor.

But the design is much more than a job of the architect as translator. The Nasher also has its own distinct architectural gesture, in the interplay between the precast concrete boxes in a landscape—fusing indoor and outdoor — and the expanse of the 13,000 square foot Mary D.B.T. Semans Hall.

The static elements of the pavilions are counterpointed by the seemingly eccentric but actually rigorous form of the piazza, the skylight free of any supporting columns. Viñoly's design was created by appropriating an ingenious device--derived from 'chinese sticks'--in which each beam of the structure is supported only on one end, while the free floating end is supported by another beam. "It makes a rotational structure allowing for an enormous span with practically no structure being perceived," Viñoly notes. And even the eccentric glass 'caprice' which covers it is actually related to a functional element: the draining of rainwater, and the different heights of the pavilions.