Fogg Art Museum Addition | 32 Quincy Street | Cambridge

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PaulC

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Renzo Piano's Art Museum for Harvard
May 18 through June 30, 2008
Fogg Art Museum

This exhibition presents Renzo Piano Building Workshop's schematic design for the long-awaited renovation of the Harvard University Art Museums' facilities at 32 Quincy Street. Renzo Piano, a recipient of both the Pritzker Prize and the American Institute of Architects' 2008 Gold Medal, has been charged with designing a home for the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler museums under one roof. Along with critically needed updates to the building?s systems and infrastructure, the renovation will yield enlarged exhibition spaces and expanded study centers that will allow greater interactions with our extraordinary collections. While not a representation of the final design, the exhibition presents an important milestone in design progress and highlights many of the opportunities and challenges we face as this historic transformation moves forward.
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http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/exhibitions/fogg/renzopiano.html
 
Re: Fogg Art Museum at Harvard

Renzo Piano, a recipient of both the Pritzker Prize and the American Institute of Architects' 2008 Gold Medal, has been charged with designing a home for the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler museums under one roof.
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Fogg and Sackler are not presently under one roof. Does this mean one or the other building will be abandoned while the other is enlarged? If so, which one? Sackler is by the once-esteemed James Stirling, and Fogg is a modest Beaux-Arts masterpiece.

Or do they intend to build a tunnel?
 
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Harvard originally wanted to build a gerbil tube bridge between the two (you can see on the exterior of Sackler where it would have gone), but the city of Cambridge nixed that.
 
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^ So what's the plan now?
 
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Now, with a comprehensive review of the arts at Harvard under way, with its own implications for Allston (see "Approaching the Arts Anew"), Harvard will instead proceed with the Quincy Street renovation, a massive and complex undertaking that will begin on June 30 with the yearlong process of emptying the building of all its artwork and staff . (Artworks and personnel will move to an off site location in Greater Boston.) Construction is expected to begin in late fall 2009. The project will be extraordinarily expensive, not only because of the multiple moves of objects and personnel required, and the challenges of working on an urban site, but also because of the building?s landmark status, the need to capture underground space, and the requirement for complex fire, security, and climate-control systems. The total cost may run a few hundred million dollars.

When 32 Quincy Street reopens in 2013, it will serve as home to all three of the University art museums: the Fogg, the Sackler, and the Busch-Reisinger. (During the closure, HUAM will use the nearby Sackler building, one-third the size of the Fogg, for a limited installation of artworks from all three collections). Architect Renzo Piano is working on the plans, now in the conceptual phase, as the museum seeks approval from Cambridge boards and community groups. Once the renovation is complete, all the collections will be represented in the new building, but only some of the staff and the collections will return. The Fine Arts Library will move to the Sackler building, joining the already-resident history of art and architecture department. Gallery space in the renovated Fogg will increase, but office space will be reclaimed, so only the curatorial, conservation, and director?s staff will remain.
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http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/01/art-museum-two-step.html
 
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Wasn't there a museum built recently that was primarily underground?

I think it won some major awards or recognition at least.

I can't for the life of me remember any of the details.
 
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Do you mean the new Kansas City art museum? It sort of darts in and out of these mulligans:

nelson_extention1.jpg


phLG_Nelson.jpg
 
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Yeah, I guess that's it.

For some reason I thought more of it was underground.
 
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There was also the Piano Charles River museum that was going to be like 90% underground. It was still slaughtered in its crib by NIMBYs.
 
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Are they saying that there won't be galleries at all in the Sackler Bldg?
 
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Sounds like it -- all art will be in the current (and expanded) Fogg building.
 
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I've never been in the Sackler (maybe I should hurry!)...is this a big loss (for the public)?
 
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statler said:
Wasn't there a museum built recently that was primarily underground?
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Our pals Machado & Silvetti just did this up at Bowdoin College in Maine. There's a piece in ArchRecord this month. Most of the addition and new gallery space is underground, with the new entrance in a glazed and copper-clad cube, with the expected butterfly roof. The entry sequence is similar to entering the MFA through Pei's wing -- not ideal, but acceptable, in that it allowed the main building, by Charles McKim, to remain unaltered from the Quad.
 
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Re: Fogg Art Museum at Harvard

czsz said:
I've never been in the Sackler (maybe I should hurry!)...is this a big loss (for the public)?
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I haven't been in there in a long time, but the inside is a nice, simple museum that makes great use of the small gallery space available. It's also one of the few James Stirling buildings in the US... It's definitely worth a look if you get a chance, but it's no masterpiece.
 
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Yep. The intended portal for a pedestrian bridge to the Fogg is quite obvious in that photo. It is considerably more prominent than the actual first-floor entrance.

By the way, the building now called 'Adolphus Busch Hall' was the original home of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.
 
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Ah, Adolphus Busch Hall is achingly gorgeous. It looks like it was airlifted in from Heidelberg.
 
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I had not realized this was going to be so extensive and expensive. The topic probably ought to be moved to new construction as the cost appears to be more than the MFA expansion, "a few hundred million."

Busch Reisinger (images below) gets demolished:

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as does that part of Fogg not in the original building.

N. Allston was complaining that Harvard's museum plans for N. Allston were not grand enough... so the grand stays in Cambridge, for the moment.
 
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Well that's too bad, I thought they did a very good job with those galleries.
 
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