Arts

The new Virginia Museum is huge. In fact, it’s now the 10th-largest comprehensive art museum in the country, with more than half-a-million square feet under roof, not to mention acres of outdoor sculpture gardens. “But it’s not size that’s important,” says Director Alexander Nyerges; “it’s quality. And the Virginia Museum has one of the finest art collections, not just in America, but in the world.”

Nyerges explains that before the 165,000-square-foot new wing was built, “we could display about 2,500 works of art in the galleries. Now there are more than 5,000 objects on display, many that people have never seen before. Our special exhibition space has doubled, which will allow us to accommodate the larger exhibitions we used to have to turn away. And we now have a spacious, convenient parking deck, a new library, two new restaurants and new children’s facilities. And …”—he pauses for emphasis—“we’re free!”

The design uses glass and light to blur the boundaries between indoors and out. No solid brick walls block the view; rather, curved glass defines the space and gives the building a feeling of transparency. No matter where you stand, you can see through a glass wall to something else—another indoor gallery or light-filled atrium, or outside to the sculpture garden that slopes gently along the length of the museum up to the top of the parking deck.

The idea for the expansion took shape in the mid-1990s. That’s when the Board of Trustees developed a strategic plan to deal with the museum’s main shortcoming: a lack of space for the permanent collection, for special exhibitions and for visitor parking. The original building, which opened on the Boulevard in 1936, had been enlarged four times over the years—most recently in 1985—yet the collection had outgrown even that space.

The $150 million project was far more complicated than simply attaching an addition to the existing building. It included a complete renovation of the structure as well as the updating of several antiquated systems such as fire suppression, lighting and security. “It was like a Rubik’s Cube times a thousand,” says Nyerges, who came to the museum in 2006 from the Dayton Art Institute, when the construction was already underway. Some will remember that when the expansion was first announced, it was scheduled for completion in 2007, in time for the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. “The complexity of the expansion made that impossible,” says Nyerges. “It was a renovation plus a retrofit plus new construction. I am thankful that we could do it all and be closed only 10 months.”