The New Busch-Reisinger Plans

A few years ago, it became apparent to University officials that Adolphus Busch Hall, the former home of the Busch-Reisinger collection of Central and Northern European art, was inadequate. A lack of climate control and a problem with housing the museum's growing need for space prompted Harvard to consider building a new museum for the collection. Yesterday, the plans for the new structure were unveiled at the Fogg in a special exhibit, The New Building for the Busch-Reisinger Museum: Plans and Drawings by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates.

The New Building for the Busch-Reisinger Museum: Plans and Drawing by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates

At the Fogg Art Museum

through March 19

For several years museum officials had been concerned that Adolphus Busch Hall's complete lack of a climate control jeopardized the collection's more fragile pieces, such as the paper works and wooden sculptures. Furthermore, the 68 year-old structure was not adequately equipped to provide services for handicapped patrons. Officials considered renovating the old building but soon realized costs would be too high. Thus, they made plans to construct a new building to display the collection.

The new structure will not only house the Busch-Reisinger works, but will also blend with the Fogg and Sackler Museums without blurring the collection's distinctive character.

The current exhibit consists of 14 prints of the proposed architectural plans, including two exterior-view prints hand-colored with pencils, two samples of materials to be used in the building and a cardboard scale model of the new museum. Although the exhibit is not similar to the retrospectives and theme collections the Fogg usually displays, the scrupulously plotted plans of the building are aesthetically interesting, and possibly fascinating to those interested in architecture.

The prints show the new building from five different angles, floor by floor like a large layer cake. They show the future locations of the new Fine Arts Library reading room, the new galleries and display rooms and the renovations to be made in the Fogg. The two large colored prints show what the new museum should look like on the outside: squarely angular and covered with square slate and pink granite tiles arranged strategically. Samples of the tiles themselves are displayed nearby.

The exhibit is significant in that it shows not only the design of the building, but also its relation to neighboring buildings. The architects seem to have fulfilled Harvard's wish of unifying the museums. One of the building's designers, Charles Gwathmey, who will be discussing his firm's work at the Fogg next Thursday, said last week that the project "imaged [the museums] into a kind of architectural assemblage that would present the Fogg as an institution of parts but all interconnected." Accordingly, the plans demonstrate how the architects integrated old and new into a cohesive unit, both structurally and aesthetically.

The modern three-story structure is to be joined to the Fogg on Prescott Street, with its main entrance through the second floor of the Fogg. Not only will the location compress the space between exhibits, but it is hoped that it will make what is now a series of tar paths and dumpsters visually pleasing. The new complex will also be integrated with its famous neighbor, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, which was designed by French architect Le Corbusier. The ramp from the Carpenter Center which now opens into the unused rear of the Fogg will lead to a plaza and the new main entrance to the Fine Arts Library.

Design-wise, the simple, rectangular building will complement the ultramodern, cement Carpenter Center and the majestic red-brick Fogg without mimicking either. To enhance the structural unity are the proposed exterior materials, "warm gray" porcelain metal panels, honed, green Vermont slate tiles and flame-finished pink granite, "intended to mediate the monolithic scale of the concrete Carpenter Center on the one hand, and the brick of the Fogg on the other."

Although the public opening of the exhibit was slightly delayed because an item in the collection was held up at customs in Detroit, the rest of the collection went up as planned. The plans are being shown in the west wing of the Fogg through the middle of March.