Cleveland Museum of Art board OKs renovation's final phase
Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The next stop for the $350 million expansion and renovation at the Cleveland Museum of Art is the finish line in three years.
On Monday, trustees of the museum voted unanimously to press ahead with the final phase of construction, which will include completion of a vast, skylighted atrium, and a new West Wing, which will house the museum's world-famous collection of Asian art.
"Not only am I thrilled, absolutely everybody in the room is thrilled," said Al Rankin, president of the museum's board.
He said 23 of 29 voting trustees approved "Step D" of the project, which includes making new interiors ready to receive art at the end of 2012.
Gallery installations are to proceed through 2013. It will be up to a new director, whom the museum hopes to appoint later this year, to decide when and how the new galleries will open.
Under discussion is a series of "soft" openings in 2013, versus a bigger bang in 2014.
When finished, the museum will be 588,000 square feet, half again as large as it was in 2005 when the project began. Gallery space will increase by 30,000 square feet.
Michael Horvitz, co-chair of the museum's board, said the impending completion of the project will enable the museum's staff to resume the energetic programming -- particularly in the area of exhibitions -- which the museum experienced in the 1980s and '90s.
During those decades, under former Directors Evan Turner and Robert Bergman, the museum mounted as many as 25 shows a year ranging from intimate solo shows to massive blockbusters.
Attendance soared as high as 719,000 in 1987 and stayed well over 500,000 from 1996 to 2001, only to drop during the run-up to the big project and the construction, which required entirely closing galleries for most of 2006.
"We can see the day when the staff won't have to spend time on the physical plant and they can return to the kind of excitement and environment and programming that the people of Cleveland deserve," Horvitz said.
Rankin said that the construction project is on time and on budget, and that all bids are in agreement with estimates.
"There are really no issues," he said.
Since 2002, the museum has raised $220 million for the construction project, and nearly $322 million overall, including $102 million for the museum's endowment and ongoing operations.
The fundraising continued through two recessions, including the worst economic downturn since the Depression.
So far, money for the construction project has come from 372 individual donors and foundations. Of that group, the top six donors gave $103 million.
Thomas Anderson, interim development director at the museum, said the museum is fully confident it will raise the next $130 million for the expansion by 2014, although Rankin said the pledges would probably not be collected until five years later.
Anderson said a broad, communitywide campaign will involve many more donors and much smaller amounts.
The museum paved the way for the vote Monday by obtaining permission from Cuyahoga County Probate Court last year to temporarily use up to $75 million in income from its art-purchase endowment for the construction project.
The museum also obtained approval last week from the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority to issue $75 million in bonds to pay for construction expenses before the rest of the money for the project is raised. The museum previously issued $90 million in bonds through the port authority in 2005.
"We're delighted as a board with the tremendous success of the fundraising so far," Rankin said. "We're all confident that through the broad base of a large group of people in this community, we can reach the goal."
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment