Ruby City: The San Antonio Art Gem That Came to Linda Pace in a Dream

There's a building in San Antonio's Southtown neighborhood that looks like it was quarried from another planet. Its walls are made of precast concrete panels embedded with red soil hauled across the border from Mexico, and when the late-afternoon light hits them, the whole structure seems to glow from within — like a geode cracked open on Camp Street.

This is Ruby City, and the story behind it is almost too good to be real.

In 2007, Linda Pace — artist, collector, philanthropist, heir to the Pace Foods salsa fortune, and one of San Antonio's most beloved cultural figures — woke from a dream in which she'd seen a building made entirely of red. She grabbed a crayon and sketched it. Then she called David Adjaye, the Ghanaian-British architect who would go on to design the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and asked him to make it real.

Pace died in 2007, before construction began. But the Linda Pace Foundation carried her vision forward, and Ruby City opened to the public on October 13, 2019, to international acclaim. Time Magazine named it one of the World's Greatest Places. Wallpaper* gave it Best New Public Building. And for the people of San Antonio, it became something rarer than an award-winner — it became a gift.

Ruby City is free. Always. No tickets, no suggested donation, no members-only hours. You walk in, and you're surrounded by 1,400 works of contemporary art that Pace spent decades collecting — paintings, sculptures, installations, and video works by artists from around the world.

The current exhibitions are worth the trip alone. Tracey Rose, the South African artist known for her fearless, confrontational performances and photographs, has a show running through May 2027. Daniel Rios Rodriguez, a San Antonio native, has transformed the Studio space with site-specific paintings in "Open This Wall." And "Sensing Meaning: Abstract Painting" draws from the foundation's deep holdings to explore how abstraction communicates beyond language.

The building itself is the collection's greatest work. Adjaye designed it with a multi-pitched roofline that channels natural light into the galleries through concealed skylights. The interior spaces ascend gradually, drawing you upward through the collection. Outside, Chris Park — a one-acre green space named for Pace's son — connects the museum to the Southtown neighborhood with native plantings and public sculpture.

Ruby City sits at the heart of San Antonio's Southtown arts district, a short walk from the Blue Star Arts Complex and the galleries along South Alamo Street. If you're doing a San Antonio art day, start here.

Visitor Info: Ruby City is located at 150 Camp St, San Antonio, TX 78204. Open Thursday through Sunday, 10am–6pm. Admission is always free. Reservations are recommended but not required.