Displaying items by tag: gallery space

After years of delays, the Peabody Essex Museum is moving forward with its expansion plan, adding a gallery wing to the existing complex and a massive off-site facility for managing and conserving collections.

The plan, which the museum announced Wednesday, represents a significant departure from its earlier intent to build a 175,000-square-foot addition to the existing museum. The new design, by contrast, calls for 40,000 square feet in new gallery space and an 80,000-square-foot off-site facility known as the Collection Stewardship Center. The museum hopes to break ground next year, with a projected completion date in 2019.

Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the cultural anchor in the evolving Seaport District since its 2006 opening, is planning a 20,000-square-foot-plus expansion.

The waterfront museum will expand into the adjacent 100 Northern Ave., a 17-story glass office tower under construction by the Fallon Co. on Fan Pier.

The ICA plans to use the additional 23,000 square feet for more gallery space.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens is expected to announce Wednesday that it is expanding its Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, adding 5,000 square feet of gallery space by summer 2016.

The oldest portion of the Scott galleries is closed for renovation and the expansion. It is the third project of its kind in seven years at the San Marino museum.

The expansion features a new glass entrance and lobby and eight new rooms for art display, 8,600 square feet in all. It is in keeping with the museum's growing commitment to American art, said the announcement from the Huntington's director of art collections, Kevin Salatino.

“Drei, zwei, eins!” With a rousing countdown in German, Stephanie Stebich, the executive director of the Tacoma Art Museum, led a group ribbon cutting Saturday morning that officially opened the museum’s new wing, showcasing art of the American West and doubling the museum’s gallery space.

Erivan Haub, the German grocery store magnate who donated his family’s Western art collection to TAM and paid for the new wing with a $20 million gift, beamed from a wheelchair pushed by his wife, Helga, during the celebration.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, known for daring installations that can stretch as long as a football field, will announce Monday a group of long-term projects with some of the country’s most prominent living artists, including Laurie Anderson, James Turrell and Jenny Holzer, as well as a partnership with the foundation of the late post-abstract expressionist Robert Rauschenberg.

When the roughly $55 million project is completed in 2017, Mass MoCA will be the largest contemporary art museum in the country, with more than 250,000 square feet of gallery space. It will also be one of the most eclectic, with a campus that features everything from rock and bluegrass festivals to dance premieres and a 27,000-square-foot building devoted to the drawings of conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art and architect Frank Gehry have unveiled a comprehensive renovation and expansion plan for the institution’s landmark building. Thanks to the exhibition “Classic Modern: Frank Gehry’s Master Plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” visitors can catch a glimpse of the design, which involves adding 78,000-square-feet of gallery space to the museum without altering its celebrated facade. Through large-scale models, site plans, and renderings, the exhibition will help patrons visualize and understand the plan that Gehry has been developing with his creative team since 2006.

While Gehry is best known for his expressive, sculptural buildings, such as the curvilinear Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, his approach to the Philadelphia Museum of Art is considerably less dramatic. The project involves transforming the museum’s interior by renewing beloved spaces, such as the Great Stair Hall, and improving how visitors enter and move through the institution.

“The architect Frank Gehry’s design for a renovation and expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be unveiled on July 1 in an exhibition at the museum on Benjamin Franklin Parkway,” the New York Times reports. “The show, ‘Making a Classic Modern: Frank Gehry’s Master Plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art,’ will offer a first look at the architect’s large-scale models, site plans, sections and renderings of the project.”

On November 16, 2014, the Harvard Art Museums -- including the Busch-Reisinger Museum, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and the Fogg Museum of Art -- will reopen to the public under one state-of-the art roof. The project, which began in 2008, has entailed a complete renovation and expansion of Harvard’s museum system. The endeavor has increased gallery space by 40 percent, for a total of approximately 43,000 square feet.

Harvard tapped renowned architect Renzo Piano to transform 32 Quincy Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the landmark building that previously housed the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museum, into the university’s artistic hub. The new facility combines the 32 Quincy Street building, which was constructed in 1927, with a new addition and a striking glass rooftop structure that will allow controlled natural light into the facility’s conservation lab, study centers, and galleries. The overhaul also includes a theater for lectures and public programming.

The Busch-Reisinger Museum, which was founded in 1903, is the only museum in North America dedicated to the art of the German-speaking countries of Central and Northern Europe. The Fogg Art Museum, which opened to the public in 1896, boasts extensive holdings of American and European art from the Middle Ages to the present. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum, which holds a remarkable Asian art collection, was established in 1985 in a separate building from the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger. The museum has been closed since June to prepare for its relocation to the new facility.  

Thomas W. Lentz, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums, said, “We knew that we had an opportunity to redefine the Harvard Art Museums as an accessible and connected 21st-century facility for teaching and learning, so we engaged Renzo Piano to design a building to implement that vision. We asked him to design it from the inside out—to create a new kind of laboratory for the fine arts that would support our mission of teaching across disciplines, conducting research, and training museum professionals. We also wanted to strengthen the museums’ role as an integral part of Cambridge and Boston’s cultural ecosystem. We look forward to welcoming students, faculty, and staff at Harvard, our Cambridge friends and neighbors, the entire Greater Boston community, and travelers from afar into our new home this November.”

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA will unveil its updated, 140-acre campus on July 4, 2014. The museum’s decade-long expansion plan is the most significant transformation the institution has undergone since opening in 1955.

The renovations were spearheaded by three different architects -- Japan’s Tadao Ando Architects designed the new, 44,000-square-foot Visitor Center; New York’s Selldorf Architects transformed the original Museum Building as well as the Manton Research Center; and Massachusetts-based firm, Reed Hilderband, updated the Clark’s landscape and added a dramatic, one-acre reflecting pool. The renovation added over 16,000-square-feet of gallery space to the museum, allowing the Clark to exhibit more of its remarkable collection, which includes Old Master paintings, Impressionist masterpieces, and fine British and American silver.

When the Clark reopens this summer, the museum will present four inaugural exhibitions and the reinstallation of its collections. The exhibitions include ‘Make It New: Abstract Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, 1950–1975,’ ‘Cast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes from the Shanghai Museum,’ ‘Raw Color: The Circles of David Smith,’ and ‘Photography and Discovery.’

Art, photography, and furniture dealer, Daniel Wolf, and Maya Lin, his award-winning architect wife, are planning to purchase the Yonkers City Jail for $1 million. The couple will turn the rundown, 10,000-square-foot structure into studio, gallery and loft space. The former jail closed in September and was put on the market by the city for $2.5 million.

The space, which will be designed by Lin, will house Wolf’s collection and serve as a base for dealing art as well as holding exhibitions and other public events. Yonkers’ Mayor, Mike Spano, said, “This prime waterfront real estate in the heart of our vibrant downtown area was no place for a jail, but it’s an ideal location for an international art collection like that of Daniel Wolf.”    

A closing is expected in December when the city approves the transaction.