I am pleased to announce that the basic design for the Chazen Museum of Art addition has been accomplished. In a May community meeting, architects from the design team Machado and Silvetti Associates and Continuum Architects + Planners unveiled detailed floor plans, elevations, and renderings. They also presented samples of stone, metal, and wood that will clad the building inside and out. The world-class design includes a grand glass-walled lobby, a dynamic plaza on the pedestrian mall between the Elvehjem building and the addition, a third-floor gallery plan uniting both buildings with a dramatic bridge, a new Museum Shop, and more. The drawings presented in May show how the new building will look and function; the technical details of the design will be completed before year-end so the project can go out for bid in December or January.

Demolition of the Peterson building, on the site of the addition, also began in May. Groundbreaking for the new building is expected in early 2009, and construction is scheduled for completion in early 2011. The elegant and highly functional expansion will add approximately 75,000 square feet to the museum, nearly doubling the current gallery space and providing specialized object-study rooms, secure art storage, a studio classroom for children, and a 160-seat auditorium for lectures and films.

Let me take you on a tour. From the main entrance, visitors come into a bright, airy 4,000-square-foot lobby with a welcome desk and coat check. (By comparison, the Elvehjem building's Paige Court measures 2,300 square feet.) From the lobby one can enter two temporary exhibition galleries, browse and shop the spacious museum store, or go to the new 160-seat auditorium for a program. What visitors will not see—but which are nonetheless essential to the museum's operations—are a spacious loading dock and receiving area. (In the past, we had to pass on certain exhibitions because it was impossible to fit them through the doors or windows of the current building.)

Taking the grand staircase at the back of the lobby to the second-floor landing, we reach the educational spaces on the second floor. A works-on-paper gallery will offer rotating selections of drawings, watercolors, prints, and photographs from the museum's collection. A special study room for works on paper, available by appointment only, will allow for hands-on examination of these fragile materials. An object-study room for the decorative arts is publicly accessible when classes are not using it; many of these pieces have been in closed storage. This room will also feature experimental student exhibitions. Finally, a state-of-the-art conference room, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the plaza, can be reserved for meetings.

Up another flight of stairs, the entire third floor of the new building is dedicated to displaying the permanent collection. Laid out to mirror the current building's gallery plan, and connected to it with a gallery bridge, this skylighted space will display twentieth- and twenty-first century American and European art, Asian art, and African art. Built in between the larger formal galleries are several transitional spaces: enclosed niche cases for objects, lit with the latest fiber optic technology; intimate “minigalleries” where the visitors can focus on one or two special works of art; and comfortable seating spaces for personal reflection and private conversation.

A dramatic bridge connects the two buildings—not a narrow pedestrian bridge but a fully functional art gallery, an integral part of an elegant and easy-to-navigate third-floor gallery plan. On the north side of the bridge, outside the gallery space, is a glass-walled mezzanine with breathtaking views of the plaza below and Lake Mendota beyond. This mezzanine will also display art, perhaps a large contemporary glass piece or a sculpture that can remain lighted at night and thus visible to those strolling or sitting on the mall below.

Designed with the idea in mind that art should be part of the real world—it is, after all, vital to life—the new building will have windows and skylights so natural light flows into the museum. Box bay and corner window nooks interrupt the cloistered atmosphere typical of museums, permitting views of the dynamic surroundings and glimpses from the outside of what's within; skylights will bring daylight into the third-floor galleries and allow visitors to glimpse the sky. One wall of the conference room is glazed, as is the entire west wall of the lobby. The building actively opens out to passersby, inviting them to enter and explore.

The lower level of the new building also offers a new educational function: an art studio classroom. Art appreciation is partly based on understanding the historical and social context of a work—understanding the process of creating art is perhaps even more important. What better way to introduce this to children than through hands-on experience?

These are exciting plans, and we look forward to groundbreaking, construction, and most of all the opening of a new Chazen designed to share more art, improve services to visitors and members, and expand programming for all.

Russell Panczenko
Director, Chazen Museum of Art