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Minneapolis building boom
Art in America, June-July, 2006 by Janet Koplos
A$50-million addition and renovation at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, designed by Michael Graves, opens to the public on June 11. The museum's core building was created by McKim, Mead & White in 1915; two flanking wings added by Kenzo Tange in 1974 are the noted Japanese architect's only U.S. project. Graves's design adds 113,000 square feet to the previous 314,000 and nods to both McKim's Neo-Classicism and Tange's minimalism. It is clad in a limestone that blends with the light gray granite and white-glazed brick of the other structures.
The project increases gallery space by 40 percent. Display areas include 27 new galleries in the wing and 49,000 square feet of existing space renovated to provide expanded quarters for the museum's large collection of Asian and African arts, along with new galleries devoted to its more than 8,000 textiles from around the world. The greatest increase in space goes to paintings and modern sculpture (10 new galleries). Joining the MIA's 15 period rooms is the newly acquired Frankfurt Kitchen (1926), a completely outfitted Bauhaus kitchen by Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky. It is the first such room in an American museum. The new wing also contains labs and other service areas, an art library, study centers for prints and photographs, a 400-seat reception hall and a three-story atrium topped by a Venetian plaster dome with an oculus.
The project is part of a cultural building boom in Minneapolis. It follows the 2005 expansion of the Walker Art Center, by Herzog & de Meuron, and of the Children's Theater Company, also by Graves. Cesar Pelli's new Central Library opened in May, Jean Nouvers new Guthrie Theater opens in June, and Frank Gehry will add to his own Weisman Art Museum, no date set.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
