Museum Paints Community Pride
Published Apr 10, 2009
Visitors walk past artist Sol LeWitt’s wall drawing Planes With Broken Bands of Color at the Akron Art Museum.
The Akron Art Museum blends an old 1899 post office and a soaring, new $35 million addition, creating a potent combination that’s turned the museum into the city’s new hot spot.
“The building is stunning. The lobby is stunning. Events are exciting just because they’re in the space,” says Jessie Raynor, director of the Akron Arts Area Alliance, which has its offices down the street. “The building and the energy it has brought in make it the place to be.”
With a new 160-seat auditorium, the museum is attracting audiences for its partnerships with Akron Independent Film Festival and a group that presents chamber music on Tuesdays.
“Third Thursdays” draws young professionals for music and cocktails in the “Crystal,” a three-story, glass-and-steel lobby, a signature part of Coop Himmelb(l)au’s design. The museum expansion was the renowned Austrian firm’s first public design in the United States.
At its core, though, a museum is about art, and Akron shines here, too.
“At long last, we can place on view all the major works in the collection,” says Mitchell Kahan, director and chief executive officer.
Construction closed the facility for four years, but it tripled its space. The museum houses significant collections of photography, Northeast Ohio art, American Impressionism and international art since World War II.
The expansion has created new opportunities to reach younger audiences, too. Space from the original building now houses a classroom, with studio classes for youngsters as well as adults. Two Saturdays a month feature “drop-in” days where parents and children can spend time exploring a theme together, says Missy Higgins, the museum’s education director. Those sessions alternate with more-structured family classes.
“In terms of educational ability, it’s just exploded,” Kahan says. “We never had a classroom.”
From July to mid-November 2008, 3,900 school students came to the museum with school tour groups. “Jean-Pierre Gauthier: Machines at Play,” an exhibit of kinetic sculptures that made its only U.S. stop in Akron, was an especially big hit.
The museum worked with Case Western Reserve PBS to produce related documentaries, and the station’s educational staff helped develop a companion curriculum on motion and physics, Higgins says.
Raynor says the revamped Akron Art Museum has “put the city on the map as a forward-thinking, innovative community.”
With its reopening in July 2007, the museum – and the arts alliance nearby – are attracting coffee shops, graphic design firms and art galleries to a once-blighted slice of downtown.
“Our whole neighborhood has changed,” Raynor says. “What this project has allowed us to do is to create a civil monument in the center of the city. It’s no accident that the 327-foot long roof lights up.”
Story by Pamela Coyle
Photo by Jeff Adkins
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