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Saturday, 21 May 2011 01:36

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Announces January 2012 Opening Date for Renzo Piano Designed Wing

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum announced that it will open its new wing, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, on Thursday, January 19, 2012. The public opening celebration will begin with a ribbon cutting ceremony, with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino officiating. The Museum will honor its legacy by opening the new wing in January, as Isabella Gardner originally unveiled the Museum on January 1, 1903.

Among the inaugural season programming highlights announced are exhibitions in the new Special Exhibition Gallery and historic building, as well as an expanded concert series showcasing three works commissioned in honor of the new Calderwood Performance Hall. The wing will house essential programming and visitor amenities in purpose-built spaces, enabling preservation and restoration work in the historic 1903 building. Eight months out from the opening, the new wing is almost completely clad in its exterior materials of glass, brick and patinated copper with many interior systems going into place.

“The new wing will reveal the vibrant programming that has been constrained by the historic building’s spaces—a true opening up of the Gardner Museum. Our opening celebration in 2012 will feature all of this programming in purpose-built spaces for the first time in the museum’s history. We invite the public to join us as we celebrate the renewal of the Gardner Museum and the premiere of Renzo Piano’s brilliantly designed spaces which give contemporary form to Gardner’s legacy,” says Anne Hawley, Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the museum.

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