Space

Last fall the Philadelphia Museum of Art announced that it had selected Frank Gehry to design an underground expansion beneath the museum’s east terrace on Fairmount Hill. The Gehry expansion will cost around $500 million and add 80,000 square feet of galleries and renovated spaces. No date has been set for the start of construction.

Yesterday the newly refurbished Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building was unveiled and will open to the public on Sept. 15, and the 114,000 foot building was expanded by 59,000 feet at a cost of $90 million dollars.

And, as noted yesterday, thanks to a $500,000 gift from Wachovia, the Museum will offer free admission to its new Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building through the end of calendar year 2007.

Last weekend I walked the perimeter of both buildings, and in spite of the construction eye sores, and the masses of people who get pissed off when they get to to the top of the Rocky museum steps only to find out that the Rocky statue is no longer there (it has been relocated to the right side of the steps as one faces the museum), one still gets a really strong impression of a museum with presence and vision, and the new addition is a smart step forward.

Now let's see how the Gehry addition develops. I am sure that the unfortunate Corcoran experience with its own Gehry non-addition will be studied by Anne d’Harnoncourt and the savvy PMA director will learn from it.