The Springfield Art Museum will give hard hat tours beginning this week to anyone that wants to get a sneak peek of changes going on there. Phase 1 of the museum’s renovation and expansion project will be completed soon, and Phase 2 is expected to start in October, but there’s still more money to be raised.
The Springfield Art Museum is being transformed – the current footprint of the building has been almost completely updated with new gallery space and a more logical flow. Kate Francis, Foundation executive director, walked me through the building, which mostly feels unrecognizable now.
The tour began down a hallway near the current main entrance.
"One of the things that we're very committed to in the renovation of the art museum is accessibility," said Francis. "So, the hallway that we're standing in here right now has a nursing mothers or an infant feeding room that is private. We have a restroom, an adult family restroom, that has an adult family changing table in it so the persons and caregivers or persons that need that special accommodation have that...it's something that we didn't have before."
She said there’s also a sensory safe room for those who need to get away to a quiet place. For some people, those things mean the difference between being able to visit the museum and staying home.
Next, we went into what was once the auditorium. More work has been done since I was last there in the space that will be a high-ceiling special exhibitions gallery.
"One of the things that folks will notice if they're coming in on the public hard hat tours is the addition of a lot of windows," said Francis. "And people are like, well, light and art don't mix."
She explained they can control the light coming through the windows to protect the art. The windows are needed, according to Francis, to physically open up the museum to the outside.
"The light, of course, changes the whole feeling of the room in general. But it also, from a philosophical standpoint, really opens the museum up physically. More transparency, more opportunity for people that are walking by to see what is happening inside and that there are people inside the building," she said. "Before (it) was very insular, very enclosed. And so, we're really doing our very best to open it up as much as the artwork would allow."
Francis points out a rotating exhibitions gallery that will host everything from national traveling shows to the All School Exhibition. Nearby is a long wall of windows with bird-safe dots that allows visitors to look out into a new courtyard. She said that courtyard might have an art installation. And they might have music out there – the entire museum will be completely wired for sound.
Another new gallery she shows me will allow the museum to create an artist residency program.
"The space that we're standing in right now would be where an artist residence would work in oil or printmaking or pottery," she said. "We have a kiln room that we've installed. There'd be a large window for folks to be able to observe the artist and interact with them. They might have open studios, so we're working on developing that program where we would have folks coming in from the region, maybe the four-state area, coming in and doing artwork on about a three-month basis twice a year."
Another space – the Robert and Margaret Corolla Art Study Room – will allow for more collaboration with higher education institutions "where they have students that come in and want to look at, observe, learn from works from the permanent collection. We haven't had a secure place where we can do that and leave works out. Or if multiple classes of the same series wanted to come and observe them, we would have to take them out, put them back, take them out, put them back. So, this is a secure room that allows those things to happen."
Phase 2 will add 20,000 square feet to the building, which is when the public will really start to notice the changes.
"They're really going to see a difference when we start on phase two, when the whole west end comes down and a two story structure goes up and on the east end on National, when we start working on that two story digital Beacon Gallery is what we're calling it, then the casual passerby will be able to say, 'oh, yeah, there's something really significant happening there.' "
But she believes the internal transformation will be just as impressive.
Francis is optimistic the entire project will be finished in time for the museum’s 100th anniversary in 2028. She said they’ve already begun planning the centennial celebration and grand opening – which will likely be in the fall of that year.
As far as fundraising, they’re in the final stretch. She said their goal is to raise an additional $5 million.
You can register for a tour and/or find out how to donate to the project at sgfmuseum.org.
