Philly art lovers to see much-needed expansion

updated 9:38 a.m. ET Aug. 17, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - For a museum that has never set so much as a toe outside its original footprint, the opening of a new building with 173,000 square feet (16,072 square meters) of gallery, study and restoration space could be considered a major leap.

But for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the debut of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building will be simply a step — the first in a decade-long plan to renovate existing facilities, create vast new display spaces and, ultimately, allow visitors to see more art in rooms better suited for viewing.

The museum's first expansion since it opened nearly 80 years ago, the project aims to free up cramped collections, pieces of which now are relegated to storage because there's no more room on the walls.

It will enlist world-renowned architects and is expected to come at a cost of $500 million, funded through city, state and private sources, plus an extra $90 million for the Perelman.

The Perelman Building, opening to the public on Sept. 15, will house some of those vagrant works.

"It may be a first step, but it's a giant step," said Anne d'Harnoncourt, the museum's director and CEO. "It restores a fabulous piece of architecture, reaches farther into the community and offers interior proportions that are becoming to sculpture, which can't be done in the building on the hill."

The Perelman, an art deco structure across the scenic Kelly Drive from the museum's main neoclassical temple on a hillside, could be a museum all its own.

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Gilded ceramic creatures peer down from its roof line over intricate black and gold depictions of the seven stages of life. A step in the cathedral-like entrance puts visitors to the right of a high-ceilinged gallery for large contemporary art pieces and face-to-face with the sunlit galleria that connects the original, 1927 building with a large addition.

Most of the Perelman Building's galleries will hold textiles and works on paper — prints, drawings and photography. The galleries will be in constant flux because those works are light sensitive and cannot remain on display more than an average of three to six months without sustaining damage.

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The collections will be stored in the building, and visitors will eventually be able to reserve study rooms to privately view any portion of them.

"It's not a support to the main museum, but a primary site," said Richard Gluckman, who worked on renovation and expansion design for the Perelman with Gluckman Mayner Architects. "The dynamic mix of facilities makes it an active, public building."

Though the Art Museum has never expanded outward before, it hasn't been static, either. Upon its completion in 1928, only about 20 of its more than 200 galleries were filled. Since then, its collections have steadily increased until they finally overflowed from those galleries — a kind of internal expansion that allowed the building of stately columns and famous steps to become a city icon.

The question, then, became how to create more space in the main building without altering its beloved architecture.

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