When the Addison Gallery of American Art reopens in the spring of 2010, residents won't just find it better able to display its famous artwork. The museum will also be better able to educate local students, provide art on demand for scholars and serve as a test case for other environmentally friendly buildings.
In fact, the improvements to the exhibit space are among the more subtle changes taking place as part of the $30 million renovation and expansion, as a group of about two dozen town, construction and Phillips Academy officials saw while touring the building Monday.
The 25,271 square foot museum will add more than 50 percent more space, consisting of climate-controlled storage, office space and a museum learning center. The new addition has a glass and stainless steel mesh front, setting it off from the classic entrance to the museum, which opened in 1931 and was designed by architect Charles Platt.
Visitors were escorted through the dusty bones of the building to see what will be new storage space on the bottom floor of the new area, including a temperature-controlled area for the museum's photographic collection that project manager Jennifer Greene Smith described as "almost like a big, walk-in cooler."
For the first time in decades, all of the gallery's more than 16,000 objects will be stored on site. Large elevators will allow the objects to be brought up to the exhibit space, or into the new museum education center for classes of students or art history scholars.
"We get hundreds of new objects every year. The important thing for us is that students and the public have access to these objects as quickly as possible," said gallery director Brian Allen.
"This is incredibly exciting that we will have additional education space," said Julie Bernson, director of education. "It's a space that's accessible to all school groups in the area."
"We provide a big chunk of the arts curriculum for Lawrence and we'd be happy to do the same for Andover," said Allen, after the tour.
Exhibit space
Moving the offices out of the original museum areas allows the Addison to again use all exhibit area as originally intended, with the added benefits of modern lighting. A welcome desk and display of Addison books for sale will be moved from the entry rotunda. While the area is empty now, when the museum opens again in April, Venus Anadyomene, Paul Manship's 1927 sculpture will return to the entrance, and the marble fountain will work for the first time in many years.
"One of our goals is to put it back to its original, 1930s purity," said Allen of the rotunda. "The space will be, like the rest of the Addison, both intimate and grand."
Standing in one of the galleries smaller exhibit spaces, off the rotunda, Greene Smith said workers were keeping architectural details including original moulding, while adding 21st century security and other technology.
"The intent for these spaces was to have as little impact as possible," she said, "while doing stuff like bringing in new light fixtures, bringing in sprinklers."
In the main exhibit space, Sol LeWitt's geometric wall mural remains, one of the lone reminders of the building's purpose amid the dust and whir of construction.
"Our task in this space was to get sprinkers installed while impacting the mural as little as possible," said Smith, as people strained to spot the sprinkler heads. "They're very discretely hidden in the [dark strips] of the space."
"We're trying to figure out how to use the skylights on the top floor," which had been covered over, said Allen, "so there will be more natural light coming into the museum."
"Our lighting was state of the art...1968," he deadpanned. "That will be the big difference people notice."
Green roof
Visitors to the new education center, or to the staff offices on the top floor of the new space, will see before them an unusual garden when the project is complete. A 2,536-square-foot portion of the roof of the Addison's addition will be covered with low-growing greenery that will retain rain water.
Andover officials expressed excitement at learning more about the effects of the environmentally-friendly rooftop.
"This is Andover's first green roof," said Paul Materazzo, Andover town planner. "I think the private sector is going to put it up first and the public sector will sit back and see how it works."
He hopes to see more buildings use the technology, saying mill buildings, such as the ones at Dundee Park near the Andover commuter rail stop, are perfect for a retrofit because they have flat roofs and could see a savings on heating and cooling of up to 20 percent. Such roofs will improve the area's water quality because rain water will be cleansed naturally by the plants "rather than going in a pipe, shot off to a drain, shot off to a stream," he said.
School Committee Chairwoman Debra Silberstein said Andover could pursue a green roof for a new Bancroft Elementary School, noting financial incentives might be available from the state.
