Frank Gehry renovates the Philadelphia Museum of Art with Rafael Guastavino's vaults

Project description by Philadelphia Museum of Art

The renovation of Philadelphia Museum of Art marked an important milestone in the realization of the museum’s Facilities Master Plan: the reopening of architecturally significant spaces that have been out of the public eye for many decades.

The opening reactivated a grand entrance lobby with ceiling heights of more than 7 meter / 24 feet and a rich array of architectural features, as well as a section of the museum’s storied Vaulted Walkway—its arched ceiling clad in newly restored Guastavino tiles. Within these spaces the museum unveiled several new amenities: Gehry-designed admission and information desks, a coat check, a new museum store, an espresso bar, a seminar room, and a dedicated educational studio for children. In total, 2,000 meter / 22,000 square feet of space has been recovered for public use. By fall 2020, when the Core Project—the present phase of the Facilities Master Plan—is completed, more than 8,400 / 90,000 square feet of renovated space will be open to visitors.

La apertura reactiva un gran vestíbulo de entrada con alturas de más de 7 metros y una rica variedad de características arquitectónicas, así como una sección del famoso pasillo abovedado del museo: su techo arqueado realizado con en azulejos Guastavino recientemente restaurados. Dentro de estos espacios, el museo presentó varias comodidades nuevas: mostradores de admisión e información diseñados por Gehry, un guardarropa, una nueva tienda del museo, una barra de café espresso, una sala de seminarios y un estudio educativo dedicado para niños. En total, se han recuperado más de 2.000 metros cuadrados de espacio para uso público. Para el otoño de 2020, cuando se complete el Proyecto Central, la fase actual del Plan Maestro de Instalaciones, más de 8.400 metros cuadrados de espacio renovado estarán abiertos a los visitantes.

The North Entrance was designated for public use in 1928 when the building first opened (it was also used for the delivery of goods and services). The ground-level spaces to which it led were designed to be public facing, but this use diminished over a period of decades before the entrance was officially re-purposed to serve as a dedicated loading dock in 1975 as the museum prepared for the nation’s Bicentennial. Under the Facilities Master Plan, moving the loading dock was identified as critical to the reorganization of a number of functions within the museum, and it was relocated to the south side of the building in 2012 during an enabling phase of the Core Project.

Gehry and his team, working closely with the museum, determined to respect the vision of the original architects, honoring the modernized Neoclassical style that Horace Trumbauer and his chief designer Julian Abele, along with the noted architectural firm of Zantzinger, Borie and Medary, had chosen for their design, and retaining even the hand-painted directional signage from a bygone era that once pointed visitors to elevators and bus routes. The aging structure also required significant attention to features the team wanted to let recede from public view, leading to the placement of extensive networks of piping under floors and planning to enable maximum ceiling heights. For its public-facing features, Gehry Partners paid close attention to the warm tones of the original Kasota stone, spotlighting historic doors and columns and matching existing features with complementary ones, creating subtle contemporary notes. The finishes, notably bronze, glass, wood, and stone, convey warmth and luminosity.

Lobby
Visitors will pass through two sets of bronze and glass doors to enter a voluminous lobby (3200 sf), with ceiling heights of more than 24 feet, to arrive at the new admissions desk, coat check, the Main Store, and the nearby Vaulted Walkway. Four sets of original wooden ornamental Tiffany doors, massive in scale, were restored and repositioned in entryways. Four imposing Doric columns, also original to the space, were cleaned and repositioned. The lobby contains three large, graceful arches built into the wall facing the entry doors, two of them historic to the building. Gehry added a third archway, which will one day lead to the Gehry-designed auditorium that is planned for a later phase. It currently contains the coat check.

The floors, also new, are of Kasota limestone, sourced from the Minnesota quarries that provided the building with its stone in 1928, and selected for the subtlety of its patterning and tone. The furniture designed by Gehry—including the extensive gently curving visitor services desk—was finished in Douglas fir and bronze. The new ceiling, finished in white plaster, is coffered and backlit, adding to the overall illumination of the space. Kasota stone walls have been cleaned and restored. Signage has been designed by Pentagram in collaboration with Gehry Partners.

Vaulted Walkway
The opening of the North Entrance invites visitors into a significant length of an impressive Vaulted Walkway; it was built into the original structure to span the entire width of the museum, from north to south. Nearly a third of this walkway has been reopened to the public today, leading visitors to the 1928 public elevators near the center of the building to galleries above. In what formerly served as a metal-grated lightwell, visitors will discover a skylit espresso bar along the way, complete with seating where they can enjoy coffee and pastries offered by Constellation Culinary Group. Twenty-four feet above, Gehry has designed the steel framing for the skylight, with graceful crossings that echo the walkway’s vault design. Looking up, visitors will notice that the long skylight frames an unexpected view—the east portico with its decorative polychromed roofline—while also casting daylight into the walkway where new bronze-encased LED lighting spotlights herringbone patterns of the ceiling tile. Original to the building, this tile was often used to decorate such public spaces as New York’s Grand Central Station. The remaining length of the Vaulted Walkway, extending through the Forum to the south side, will open next year.

Main Store
The new store (2600 sf) has been relocated from the first floor to make way for new galleries of American art, opening next year. From the North Lobby, visitors may now enter the Main Store at street level, passing through a pair of monumental Tiffany doors, historic to the museum and newly conserved; in a dramatic note, Gehry requested that they be placed at the threshold to the store. In a wall dividing the store from the walkway, the architect also created a bank of large rectilinear openings, capturing reflected daylight and increasing transparency within the interior. Other contemporary touches by the architect include selection of red oak flooring and finishes in Douglas fir and bronze on the cashier’s desk. These elements echo the treatment of the dining facilities, Stir and the Café, which opened on the first floor last year. Two additional store locations are planned for the first floor, adjacent to Lenfest Hall and opening next year.

North Wing
Gehry has also designed a studio/classroom for school children as well as restrooms and a nursing station in the wing. These spaces are entered from a hallway opposite the Main Store and accessed from the Vaulted Walkway. As the museum welcomes up to 65,000 school children every year, this new classroom, which will be expanded to two in several months, will serve as the starting point for school visits, with convenient bus drop-off just outside the North Entrance. The Bache-Martin students become the first users today. Eventually the museum’s Education offices will move to an upper floor of this wing.

Admission to the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Pay What You Wish all day today, from 10:00 a.m. until 8:45 p.m. Also beginning today, the West Entrance will close for renovations as part of the Core Project, reopening in 2020.