Expansion of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

London-based Rick Mather Architects in partnership with a Richmond architectural firm, SMBW, have designed the expansion of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, USA, which has opened to the public on May 1, 2010. VMFA Director Alex Nyerges says: “Everything about it is bigger, brighter and – with free admission – more welcoming. Our new James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing gives us a thrilling, glamorous stage from which to welcome visitors and to display more of our global collection and present important special exhibitions.” The expanded museum includes double the space for major traveling exhibitions and increases total space for VMFA's permanent collections and exhibitions to 134,000 square feet. Major expanses of glass allow natural light to pour into the heart of the museum. The McGlothlin Wing is the primary feature in the museum's redevelopment of its 13-1/2-acre site that knits together additional new elements – the E. Claiborne and Lora Robins Sculpture Garden, the Mary Morton Parsons Plaza, and a new landscaped parking deck – with the original museum and three other historic buildings on the museum’s grounds. Indiana-limestone and glass cover the exterior of the wing, which also includes an art education center, conservation studios, the Margaret R. and Robert M. Freeman Library, a gift shop, and restaurants. The innovative glass roof of the new Atrium, a triple-height "main street," delivers natural light to this central area and surrounding spaces. A 40-foot-high glass wall overlooking the Boulevard signals the purpose of the Museum from the outside by showcasing works of art and revealing public activity within. The project is the first major U.S. commission for Rick Mather, an American who has also designed modern additions to a number of Great Britain's most venerable cultural institutions, among them the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Photos by Travis Fullerton and Katherine Wetzel, © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)