Style Spotlight: Museums Update
- Steve Russell’s “Bridge Reflection” is part of “Mighty Tacoma: Photographic Portrait 2010” at the Tacoma Art Museum. Credit: Steve Russell
OPENINGS
The Crocker Art Museum opened its dramatic new 125,000-square-foot expansion on Oct. 10. The new Teel Family Pavilion complements the Sacramento, Calif., museum’s 125-year-old historic structures, and more than triples its current size.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, celebrated the grand opening of its new Art of the Americas wing with a free community day on Nov. 20. The new wing, designed by London architects Foster + Partners, allows more than 5,000 works to be on view. The soaring glass Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard serves as a dynamic meeting space.
The Denver Art Museum will debut the renovation and complete reinstallation of its American Indian and Northwest Coast art galleries in late January 2011. New interactive, artist-centric displays will feature 600 pieces of art from the museum’s collection.
A new 12,000-square-foot wing opens at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Fla., in February. The $5 million project, which increases the museum’s public exhibition space by 50 percent, will house more than 250 art and architectural objects from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s famous Long Island home, Laurelton Hall.
EXPANSIONS
The Maryhill Museum of Art in Goldendale, Wash., has announced plans for a $10 million expansion project to be completed by March 2012. The new 25,500-square-foot wing will include an art education center, collections suite, outdoor plaza and cafe.
ANNIVERSARIES
The Tacoma Art Museum in Washington celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2010. In honor of its birthday, the museum is hosting “Mighty Tacoma: Photographic Portrait 2010” through April 24. The special exhibition celebrates the city’s diverse community, and invites everyone to share their own portraits and cityscapes.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco celebrate two special birthdays in 2010: the 40th anniversary of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the fifth anniversary of the de Young Museum. The de Young has several blockbuster exhibitions in the works, including “Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay” through Jan. 18, and “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris,” June 11-Sept. 25.
The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., will celebrate its 90th anniversary in 2011 with a variety of special exhibitions, programs and events throughout the year. The festivities kick off with a free weekend Jan. 15-16.
The Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Fla., is partnering with International Fine Art Expositions to celebrate the museum’s 70th anniversary on Feb. 8. Shuttle buses will run between the exposition and the museum, which is offering free admission to a lecture, self-guided exhibition, treasure hunt and birthday-cake design challenge that day.
ACQUISITIONS
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona announced the donation of 100 works of contemporary painting and sculpture by Santa Fe collectors Don and Carolyn Eason. The collection will be featured through Jan. 23 in the exhibition, “Thirty Years of Collecting: A Recent Gift to the Museum.”
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has acquired 160 contemporary works from Potomac, Md., collectors Leatrice and Melvin Eagle. “The addition of the Eagle Collection builds on existing strengths of the MFAH’s ceramics holdings and fills some important gaps, including our holdings of works by seminal West Coast American artists and pioneering British potters of the 1940s to 1960s,” says Cindi Strauss, curator of modern and contemporary decorative arts and design.
