POTOMAC, MD.- Glenstone Museum today announced that it will open its major expansion to the public on October 4, 2018, inaugurating a 204,000-square-foot museum building known as the Pavilions, a group of new visitor amenities and an additional 130 acres of landscape. People may begin in early September to schedule visits to experience the expanded museum. Admission to Glenstone is always free.
“Glenstone has changed dramatically since it opened in 2006 with a single 30,000-square-foot building and a 100-acre landscape,” said Mitchell P. Rales, founder of Glenstone Museum. “But throughout this transformation, we’ve maintained a single mission: to create a seamless integration of art, architecture, and landscape and make it available free of charge to all who wish to visit. We’re thrilled to begin welcoming visitors to this fully realized experience starting in October.”
The expansion provides 50,000 square feet of new indoor exhibition space in the Pavilions, added to the 9,000 square feet of exhibition space in the existing museum building known as the Gallery. It also more than doubles the natural landscape, which features the museum’s outdoor sculptures, and offers two new cafés for lunch and light refreshments, a new public entrance, and an Arrival Hall with a bookstore.
“We’ve worked carefully to create a visitor experience unlike any other, providing each visitor with an unhurried, contemplative engagement with the artworks,” said Emily Wei Rales, co-founder and director of Glenstone Museum. “As we look forward to the opening, we’re deeply grateful to our architect Tom Phifer, Adam Greenspan at PWP Landscape Architecture, and the entire team that has worked with us to realize this project. Above all, we’re grateful to the artists who have collaborated with us to present their groundbreaking works in this setting.”
The Pavilions comprises 13 distinct spaces installed with artworks drawn exclusively from Glenstone’s collection. Some of the spaces will be dedicated to single-artist installations, while others will feature regularly changing exhibitions of works by multiple artists. Artists featured in the inaugural installations include Louise Bourgeois, Roni Horn, Michael Heizer, Brice Marden, On Kawara, Lygia Pape, Martin Puryear, and Charles Ray. Additional artists will be announced in the coming months.
The architect for the expansion is Thomas Phifer and Partners. The landscape architect is PWP Landscape Architecture. The architect for the Gallery, where Glenstone will continue to present changing exhibitions, was Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects.
Glenstone’s next show in the Gallery, an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois’s work, will open to the public in May. Glenstone will temporarily close the exhibition during September to prepare to inaugurate the expansion and will then re-open on October 4.
