Art in the Vault

摘要

The new home of the Racine Art Museum―an institution that focuses on contemporary craftwork―offers an inspiring model to similar organizations across America that need more display space and a welcoming public presence but are unable to fund a grand edifice. Four years ago the museum's board selected Brininstool + Lynch, a small Chicago firm best known for its minimalist houses and art galleries, to create a new $50 million building alongside its old home, a nineteenth-century Italianate farmhouse in a park at the edge of this southern Wisconsin city. As the economy soured, the planning committee realized that it would be too extravagant a project for this depressed industrial city on Lake Michigan. They slashed the budget to $6.5 million and commissioned the architects to remodel a bank building that the municipality had donated on Main Street, leaving the farmhouse to be used as an educational facility. Frugality paid off: Infused with urban energy, the new museum has a visibility it lacked on its old site, and it may help regenerate downtown. It should become a stop on the architectural pilgrimage to Frank Lloyd Wright's Wingspread House and Johnson Wax complex, both in Racine, and Santiago Calatrava's addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, 20 miles to the north.