With a $12.5 Million Revamp, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design Has Turned Its Galleries Into a Contemporary Art Museum

This weekend, the Massachusetts College of Art and
Design in Boston has redesigned and rebranded a small
campus gallery into a new contemporary art museum. The
15,000-square-foot MassArt Art Museum, which cost
$12.5 million to revamp, has been in the works for more than a
decade.

“It took nine years to completely transform and renovate the
space,” said Lisa Tung, who was appointed the executive
director of the museum, previously known as the Bakalar and
Paine Galleries, in 2008.

One of Tung’s first orders of business as director was to hire a
consultant through the American Alliance of Museums to help chart a
course for the future of the museum.

The most pressing change, the consultant said, was to give the
institution a front door. “We had been programming contemporary art
for a long time, but we were buried in the bowels of the building,
so people couldn’t really find us, and we couldn’t get foot traffic
off the street,” Tung said. And the museum facilities, built in
1906, lacked air conditioning, humidity control, elevators, and
adequate restrooms.

To make the museum, previously something of a campus secret,
more accessible to the public, the building now opens directly onto
Huntington Avenue—an arts thoroughfare also home to the nearby
Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum—with a
lobby and outdoor plaza to welcome visitors. Rebranding as MAAM,
the museum hopes to establish itself as an identifiable and
well-known institution.

There are now ample bathrooms, climate control systems, and a
new preparatory space that will allow staff to work on future shows
without closing the galleries for extended periods of times.
Exhibitions will now run for at least 12 weeks (in the past, they
could be as short as six). The renovations also opened up the
ceiling on the upper floor to reveal terracotta rafters and steel
beams, and creating a 37-foot-tall space that can accommodate
large-scale work.

Taking full advantage of its new capacity is the museum’s
inaugural exhibition, the first US solo museum outing
for Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos.
Titled “Valkyrie Mumbet,” the show is the latest in the
artist’s “Valkyrie” series, which is based on the female figures
from Norse mythology who live and die on the battlefield.

“Joana’s work is about celebrating and honoring women and their
accomplishments and women’s work, such as embroidery and craft and
textiles and crocheting and things like that,” said Tung, who
commissioned a new work by the artist for the occasion. “She
was willing to dream really big.”

Joana Vasconcelos, Valkyrie Mumbet, installation view.
Photo by Will Howcroft, courtesy of MassArt Art Museum.Vasconcelos
wanted the project to honor a woman from Massachusetts history, so
she chose Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman, an enslaved woman who in 1781
sued for her freedom based on the Massachusetts constitution, which
declares all people free and equal. “When she won her case, that
was a key moment in the abolishment of slavery,” Tung said.
“Joana really liked the fact that one person could make such a
big difference.”

The resulting artwork is a site-specific ode to Freeman, a
monumental textile sculpture that took six months to sew by
hand. Visitors can walk underneath the sculpture, which hangs
from the gallery ceiling, filling almost the entirety of the room.
“You can’t really describe it,” said Tung. “You have to really see
it—it is a truly spectacular piece.”

The museum is also hosting a group exhibition titled “Game
Changers: Video Games & Contemporary Art.” In addition to playable
games and Virtual Reality, the show will include more traditional
painting and sculpture inspired by video games.

And at the museum’s entrance is an art duo known as Ghost of a
Dream has been commissioned to create a site-specific installation
titled Yesterday Is Here. The psychedelic work
features quilt- and mosaic-like patterns created from ephemera from
the museum’s history. The artists cut up more than 30 years of
exhibition catalogues, posters, exhibition cards, and newspaper
clippings to create the work.

“We wanted to have an immersive art experience in the lobby,”
Tung said. “When the viewer walks in, they know they’re in a
contemporary space.”

“Joana Vasconcelos: Valkyrie
Mumbet” is on view at the MassArt Art Museum, 621 Huntington
Ave, Boston, Massachusetts, February 22–August 2, 2020.

“Ghost of a Dream: Yesterday
Is Here” is on view at the MassArt Art Museum, 621
Huntington Ave, Boston, Massachusetts, February 22, 2020–February
28, 2021.

“Game Changers: Video
Games & Contemporary Art” is on view at the MassArt Art
Museum, 621 Huntington Ave, Boston, Massachusetts, February
22–April 19, 2020.

The post With a $12.5 Million Revamp, the Massachusetts
College of Art and Design Has Turned Its Galleries Into a
Contemporary Art Museum appeared first on artnet
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