New wing will relieve pressure on the historic building and collection, improve the visitor experience, and preserve Isabella Gardner’s legacy

Mayor Thomas M. Menino today joined officials from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to officially kick off construction of the Museum’s new 70,000 square foot addition. The $118 million new wing, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Burt Hill, is expected to open in early 2012. The new addition will allow the Museum to relocate programs and functions that have unduly crowded the historic building, putting pressure on the landmark structure and its magnificent collections and diminishing the visitor experience.

“The Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum is a cultural landmark in Boston and I’m proud to support our world-class institutions as they grow,” Mayor Menino said. “The new building is designed to complement the historic museum and in itself will be a work of art. This project will help preserve the Museum while at the same time ensure that it continues to thrive.”

The use of glass, natural light, and transparency in the new entrance and first floor will afford visitors a sense of a museum-at-work as they enter the building. The design has created, for the first time, opportunities to walk through the Museum’s greenhouses, to interact with Artists-in-Residence living on site, and to observe educational classes and workshops from the lobby. The openness of the space has been conceived to encourage lounging, gathering with others, meetings, and conversation. Surrounding the first floor and visible from most areas, newly landscaped gardens are meant to encourage inquiry and exploration. All of this activity will center on preparation and anticipation for entering and experiencing the historic buildings, galleries, courtyard, and architecture.

“The Gardner Museum differs from other museums in that it is a work of art in totality—designed by its founder to be a home of the muses, to embrace all the arts using its immense collection as inspiration,” said Anne Hawley, Norma Jean Calderwood Director. “Renzo Piano has responded to the Museum’s need for functional spaces by creating a conversation with Isabella Gardner’s Museum. His answer is the working home for the arts.”

“We are not trying to compete with the beauty of the palace, but we have to provide some magic,” says architect Renzo Piano. “The new building may actually be the tool, the instrument, to save the Palace without changing it too much. That this is a fragile creation that cannot survive with its current level of use is one of the conversations we’re having every day. We are talking about an intimate museum that wants to remain intimate.”

The Gardner Museum does not label objects or artwork and has relied upon audio tours, educators, and staff to help orient the visitor. In the new wing, visitors will have additional options for orientation in a new space, named the Living Room in deference to the domestic nature of the historic building. In the Living Room, visitors will learn about Isabella Stewart Gardner and the history of the museum she founded, the collection, and its unique installation and will browse material about the Gardner Museum’s renowned Artists-in-Residence program, past and present. The Gardner’s extension will be constructed entirely on Museum property, which encompasses most of the block bordered by The Fenway, Evans Way Park, Palace Road, and Tetlow Street in the Fenway Cultural District along Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace park system.

The Gardner Museum enjoys attendance numbers today that Gardner could not have imagined. In Isabella Gardner’s day, the Museum welcomed around 2,000 visitors per year to the historic Museum building, known as Fenway Court. Today, annual attendance is around 200,000, with about 10,000 attending the musical performances in the Tapestry Room.

The new wing will feature four volumes clad in patinated green copper panels that will “float” above the transparent first floor and echo the green of the gardens. These volumes will accommodate a 300 seat, in-the-round performance hall and a 2,000-square-foot, naturally lit special exhibition gallery. Visitors will circulate through the public spaces via an open central stairway and an elevator located at the building’s core. An adjacent greenhouse structure will feature a landscape classroom, as well as two artist apartments. The new wing will also provide outdoor seating for the café and expanded garden spaces.

The largest of these new spaces, the performance hall, is designed in collaboration with acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics. With seats configured in three balcony levels surrounding the central performing area, the hall will offer sophisticated acoustics while preserving the intimate experience that has long characterized the Gardner Museum’s music program.

Current and enhanced programs and functions that will now be housed in the extension, in purpose-built spaces, include the Museum’s renowned music program; special exhibitions; visitor services such as ticketing, coat check, retail and a café; education and family programs; and state-of-the-art conservation labs, exhibition preparation space, and expanded archival and collection storage.

The Museum anticipates that the new building will be LEED certified by the United States Green Building Council. Main components of the sustainable design are a geothermal well system, daylight harvesting, water-efficient landscaping techniques and the use of local and regional materials, which reduces the environmental impact associated with transport.

Media Contacts: Jessica Shumaker, BRA, 617.918.4446.

Katherine Armstrong, Gardner Museum, 617.278.5107.

Release Date: January 21, 2010