FIVE MUSEUMS WIN ART FUND GRANTS; ST. LOUIS ART MUSEUM REVEALS EXPANSION DESIGN
Five museums and galleries yesterday won the art world’s equivalent of the lottery: a jackpot of one million pounds ($2.1 million) each to spend on acquiring international contemporary art. The organizations are the Bristol Museums; Gallery of Modern in Glasgow; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art; the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne; and Birmingham City Museum with New Art Gallery, Walsall. Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian reports that the Art Fund received twenty-nine proposals involving ninety museums and galleries across the country. The final five were selected by experts including Artangel codirector James Lingwood, artist Michael Craig-Martin, the Serpentine Gallery’s Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery.
In other news, the International Herald Tribune_ and Associated Press report that the St. Louis Art Museum, designed for the 1904 World’s Fair, on Monday revealed the design for its $125 million expansion project. The expansion was designed by London-based architect David Chipperfield. He was recognized in October with England’s highest honor for architecture, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ James Stirling Prize. The plan will increase the number of museum galleries, providing additional space for the museum’s collection of more than thirty thousand objects and for touring shows. The expansion calls for an addition to the south and east of the original building with a dark, polished concrete facade that will incorporate rock taken from a river in Missouri. Officials said in a statement that the plan provides for more than eighty thousand square feet of new galleries, public space, and collections support. The new galleries and public spaces will feature skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows, designed so that the artwork inside will still be protected from the light.
