The Philadelphia Museum of Art has broken ground on the Core Project, a $196 million transformation of its main building led by Frank Gehry. Photo courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Architectural rendering by Gehry Partners, LLP and KX-L. This stunning space will serve as a venue for performances and events, as well as a welcoming spot for visitors to socialize or orient themselves. The Forum extends from Level A to Level C and will be one of the most highly trafficked and recognizable areas created during the Core Project. Adds Rub, “It was a bit of a “Field of Dreams.” They built it, and the art came.AFTER: The Forum, looking west and up to Lenfest Hall. Several directors over decades amassed the museum’s extraordinary collections. “It’s generational, as the original building was.” The Trumbauer-Abele design took ten years to construct and was at first vastly oversized for the museum’s holdings. “A comprehensive master plan can’t be done over five or even 10 years,” explains Rub. “The whole idea with Annie was to re-establish the existing beauty of the building,” says the architect. That project would complete the vision of d’Harnoncourt, who died suddenly in 2008. A window through the terrace steps will offer a view to the city. East of the Vaulted Walkway, below the outdoor terrace, Gehry has prepared a design to add an auditorium, new galleries, and visitor services, beneath a shallow domed ceiling, with gardens sunk along the edges of the surrounding wings to bring in light. The new internal circulation through the Forum will truly come into its own in a future phase, with timing to be determined. “We enhanced the original vision to work in today’s world.” “I did not go to Philadelphia to do a trivial little piece of Frank Gehry sculpture,” the architect says.
Thick piers at the lobby vestibule were slimmed into round columns to ease movement. Wheelchair ramps have been seamlessly integrated into steps outside the west entry. Ventilation air moves through circular openings discreetly cut into the tiled ceilings of the Vaulted Walkway, around slim pendants that conceal uplighting and other systems.
The detailing in this project is so refined as to be nearly invisible. Now visitors can experience the Walkway’s entire 640-foot length as its southern section has been restored, including a new exhibition space as part of the Core Project. Closed to the public for almost 50 years, the northern section was opened in 2019 to a restored North Entrance, easing access to the surrounding streets and the Perelman Building, a grand 1926 insurance headquarters that the museum revamped and took over in 2007. The Forum now anchors the Vaulted Walkway, a stone-faced awe-inspiring tunnel original to the building with a ceiling of arching Guastavino tiles. Another stair cantilevers as it twists downward into the Forum. To enhance vertical circulation, a pair of new, stone-clad stairs invitingly curves up from the first floor, opening directly into the Great Stair Hall. Photo © Steve Hall, Hall + Merrick Photographers, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021 The 40-foot-high Forum was created by demolishing a first-floor auditorium and excavating to street level.
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