The Kimbell was originally a private collection of Ft Worth merchants and their wives. When Mr. Kimbell died in 1964, their private collection was the richest collection of European masters in the southwest of the United States. Before the museum was built in 1966, founder Richard Brown said "The goal shall be definitive excellence, not size of collection." (winning by quality, not quantity). Today's Kimbell Museum contains Michelangelo's first painting, and his only painting in the Americas, "St. Anthony's Pain."