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November, 2001
THE ARCHITECTThe expansion and renovation of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will be Mather's first major commission in the United States.An American who has lived and practiced in London since the early 1970s, Mather is regarded as a Modernist architect with a human touch and a leading proponent of sustainable or energy efficient architecture. His firm has just completed major expansion and renovation projects at three historically important cultural institutions in London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the Wallace Collection Centenary project in central London. Last month in New York City, the Business Week/Architectural Record Awards program, sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, named Mather as winner of a 2001 award for his work on the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The gallery also recently won a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) award and the RIBA-Crown Estate Conservation Award.
Mather also will work closely with a landscape architect on the design of the museum's sculpture garden. This individual or firm will be named in the coming months.
THE MUSEUMAn encyclopedic museum representing 5,000 years of human achievement, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' holdings include highly refined collections of Classical and African art; paintings by European masters such as Andrea di Bartolo, Poussin, Goya, Delacroix and Monet; one of the world's leading collections of Indian and Himalayan art; one of the nation's most important collections of fine English silver; unequaled holdings of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, ceramics, glass and jewelry; American decorative arts and paintings, including major works by artists such as Sargent and Hopper; a dynamic collection of Modern and Contemporary art; and a popular collection of Fabergé imperial jeweled objects.Additionally, through the long-standing patronage of the late Paul Mellon, the museum has assembled noted holdings of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including original waxes and bronzes by Edgar Degas. When the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts opened in the midst of the Depression in 1936, it was the country's first statewide art museum. Today, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ranks among the nation's leading art museums in the breadth and depth of its collections. Acknowledged within the museum field for decades as an innovator in statewide education, the museum has forged lasting partnerships with schools, educators and cultural centers in every corner of Virginia. These collaborative programs are administered jointly by the museum and its many statewide partners. Approximately 400,000 people visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts each year. More than 500,000 others are reached through the museum's statewide loan exhibitions, lectures, workshops and curriculum programs.
BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECTThe Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' status as a state institution of higher learning led the museum to recognize in the mid-1990s that it must expand to better serve the citizens of Virginia. As noted by Brand: "Education for people of all ages is paramount in this museum's vision of the future. Furthermore, our strategic plan specifically requires that the newly expanded museum, 'advance the achievement of the Standards of Learning in every classroom in Virginia.'" Guiding the expansion and renovation of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts have been comprehensive studies undertaken by the museum in 1994 and 1998. Drawing on interviews with members of the Richmond community and the museum's partner organizations throughout the state, these studies led to the creation of a strategic plan articulating spatial needs for the future. In 1999, the Board of Trustees formally approved a Long Range Site and Space Development Plan. This plan carefully outlined the ways in which an expansion would help the museum improve its services to Virginians and to increasing numbers of national and international visitors. A partnership with the state is essential in realizing these goals, Spilman said. In July 2000, the Board posted a request for proposals to more than 100 of the world's leading architects. In March 2001, the Architect Selection Committee announced that five competitors had been chosen from among those submitting proposals:
In addition to chairman Dr. Herbert A. Claiborne Jr., the Board's Architect Search Committee included 12 other Board members; the museum's director, Dr. Michael Brand; and the museum's senior associate director (architecture and planning), Richard B. Woodward. Paul Spencer Byard assisted the search committee as a professional advisor. Byard is on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and he is also a principal with the firm of Platt Byard Dovell Architects in New York. He is the author of The Architecture of Additions, published in 1998-the first major study of the special considerations of expanding within an existing architectural context. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is slated to unveil its new museum building in 2007. Keep up-to-date with Expansion News. |
