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 The Tucson Museum Of Art Re-Opens Following A Multi-Million-Dollar Renovation. By Margaret Regan WHEN THE TUCSON Museum of Art re-opens Saturday after a hiatus of three months, the 308 objects in its new Spanish folk art show will have plenty of room to spread out.
Space for objects like these is the chief reason the museum undertook its $2.7 million renovation. "It mainly allows us to put a good portion of the permanent collection on view," said the museum's director, Robert Yassin. "And it enlarges our space for changing exhibitions." With about 60 percent of the costs already raised, the museum increased its galleries by roughly 5,000 square feet, Yassin said. An additional 3,000 square feet have been allotted to such public spaces as a new lobby and gift shop. The alterations were accomplished mostly through a careful revamping of existing space in the building, designed in the early '70s by William Wilde. The idea behind the renovation was to use valuable space inside the museum solely to display art, and to put displaced secondary functions like the gift shop, offices and storage elsewhere. A basement storage room became a gallery, with the stored paintings carried over to a new storage room in the Education Building. The old gift shop and lobby have been transformed into galleries as well. Beloved by some as Tucson's version of the Guggenheim, what with its central atrium and ramps, and hated by others for its modernist lines in one of the city's most historic neighborhoods, the sprawling building has changed little on the outside. After the renovation, shepherded by project architect Andy Anderson, the most visible exterior change is the new gift shop pushing out into the old parking lot along Alameda. Adjoining it is a new plaza highlighted by a sculptural "gateway to the presidio" glowing in royal blue.
"Indoor plumbing may be the best part of this whole project," Stuhr jokes. She doesn't really mean it. In a tour through the competing chaoses created by the installation of the new show and last-minute museum construction, Stuhr said she's delighted by all the new gallery space, noting, "We'll have our permanent collection in the lower level, and the changing exhibitions in the upper level.... It will give the whole place a different feel. It will seem more complete."
"It has wonderful big walls," she said, just right for the collection's gigantic oils. The Heller collection, which concentrates on modernist American art from the teens through the '50s, will get a permanent display space in the room formerly occupied by the pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial. (These last two will move on over to the Stevens-Duffield House once Janos Restaurant vacates the historic house at the end of August.) Once construction is complete, Stuhr said, "There will be a period of introspection. It will give us time to pull out the collection, see our strengths and weaknesses, do a little weeding out and see what we'd like to add." Museum officials are understandably pleased with the renovations, but they have not come without some controversy. There was a minor skirmish last fall over archaeological work that TMA was supposed to have done before beginning grading in the old parking lot on Alameda. Located on city-owned land on top of the old Presidio, the museum was required to do what's called a cultural resources assessment. Aztlan Archaeology was hired to do the minor job of monitoring the digging of trenches. But when Aztlan president Laurie Slawson saw a front-end loader begin mass grading, she intervened and told TMAofficials they were required to do a major archaeological excavation. The change pushed the museum's archaeology bill from $1,500 to $50,000. "They (museum officials) had the idea that it was already disturbed," diplomatically explains Marty McCune, the city's historic program administrator, "but it hadn't been.... They got started on the archaeology a little late; they didn't get started until after they started on the excavation.... We have to remain vigilant downtown."
If this phase of renovation is relatively conservative, it's the next stage, dubbed Phase Three, that had the community in an uproar when it was announced two years ago. The museum, a private institution partially funded by the city, is the caretaker of five historic houses that belong to Tucson, and Janos Wilder has leased one of them for his award-winning restaurant since the early '80s. After the museum decided to let his lease expire, to make way for additional gallery space, the city council made assorted compromise offers to persuade the museum to allow the restaurant to stay. The museum stuck to its plans, and Janos will be shown the door at the end of August this year. Yassin said he intends to install some kind of temporary food service in the Stevens House porch, and eventually assign another spot north of the museum to a real restaurant of the museum's choosing. The museum's El Presidio neighbors still lament the impending loss of Janos, a nighttime magnet in the neighborhood year-round. Yassin has said in the past that time will prove him right: that the restored historic houses, new plazas, an outdoor performance space and larger museum will eventually draw hordes of people downtown, both the homegrown types and the new "heritage" tourists that city officials keep expecting.
"We don't even know yet how (the renovation) will change
the museum," Yassin said last week. "But we do know
that it will provide a wonderful new space for downtown."
The Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave., celebrates its re-opening with a free Fiesta del Pueblo from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 25. There will be performances all day on a Main Stage, including a concert at 12:35 p.m. by R. Carlos Nakai. Children's art workshops, storytelling, arts and craft demonstrations, palm reading and a display of low rider cars and bikes are all on the agenda. The usual food trucks will be on hand, offering Mexican specialties and Indian fry bread. For more information call 624-2333.
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The oldest artworks in the big traveling exhibition, El Alma
del Pueblo (Soul of the People), were already in place in
one of the museum's new galleries last week, even though hard-hatted
workmen were still hammering on walls and trailing electrical
tools behind them. Formerly occupied by the gift shop, the new
gallery for changing exhibitions is now graced by a serene 14th-century
Spanish Virgin and Child in painted wood and an 18th-century "Cherub
with Outstretched Arms."
Basically following Wilde's original plans, which were curtailed
by a shortage of funds, Anderson enclosed the space outside the
old front door with glass. The resulting lobby and entrance have
handsome walls of windows overlooking the plazas, and, notes curator
Joanne Stuhr with pleasure, will give the museum a safe place
to serve food at openings far from the art in the museum proper.
The old bathrooms, strangely located outside, are now inside where
they're supposed to be.
Stuhr is particularly pleased by the new spaces allotted to contemporary
art, which never before had a permanent home in the museum. The
grand new ground-floor gallery, reconfigured out of the old storage
and utility rooms, will be reserved for the '80s and '90s paintings
that the Small family donated to the museum several years ago.
In fact, the hallowed patch of land had not been previously explored
by archaeologists. Slawson said the site yielded materials from
prehistoric Hohokam days all the way up to the 20th century, though,
alas, no parts of the always-sought Presidio wall.
