Thursday, May 31, 2007

Crocker Art Museum Expansion

Looks like the long anticipated Crocker Art Museum expansion is finally ready to proceed this year. Ground breaking is set for July 26th.

The project is will run about 71.6M, financed by a bunch of different sources

CRCIP: $2M
CA Prop 40 Grant: $2M
Sac County CAMA Grant: $2.5M
SHRA Downtown BOnd: $8M
SHRA Tax Incerment: $1M
CRCIP Loan: $12M
Crocker Art Museum Association (CAMA): $44.1M
Total: $71.6M

The new wing will be named the "Teel Family Pavilion"

Here is a cool rendering from Sactown Mag.
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....and a couple others from the architects based out of NY, Gwathmey-Siegel.

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Gwathmey-Siegel have quite a museums under their belt, including the Guggenheim.

This design is much more conventional than the Guggenheim design, not surprising though. I can see how some people in Sacramento would object to something a little too non-conventional given the historical nature of The Crocker and knowing how the preservation community can be on issues like that. The architect even mentioned in the Sactown Mag article how they had a rough go the first time before the design review from preservationists. There was no mention really of what those issues were though,so I don't know I would have sided with.

While I would have liked to have seen something maybe a little more daring, I think it's still a nice looking addition. Clean and straight forward. Most importantly though, once completed in spring 2010, The Crocker will have 100K more worth of exhibit space, cafe, store, meeting rooms and more.

There is a link to the city staff report for what looks like some last minutes details.
Crocker Art Museum Expansion and Renovation Project Staff Report

4 comments:

x said...

Im happy to see this ball rolling , although im not that excited about the design .

I was under the impression that there was to be a distinct element that would add to the skyline - a spire or something to that effect .

anywho , glad to see a great museum getting a little greater

GA said...

"although im not that excited about the design."

That's a good way to put it. It doesn't look bad at all, but nothing really exciting.

There was some sort of tower or other element that was part of the plan...but it got dropped for some reason. Not sure why.

Anonymous said...

I would call it, "underwhelming."

I had hoped for something a bit more adventurous, a bit more inspiring. Although no single design is going to please everyone I suppose, I don't think they'd have lost too many people with something with a little more "oomph."

Zwahlen Images said...

I still can't believe they are going to start building the addition in the next couple months. It's great to see that things are starting to roll.