Gardner Museum Addition by Renzo Piano

2010 - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS "Huntington Avenue has long been a center of culture. The city calls it the Avenue of the Arts. But it’s been home to different kinds of culture at different times. We’re looking at the Museum of Fine Arts in the new photograph. Even before the museum arrived in Boston, this was a site for exhibitions. Pop culture existed in those days, too, and the land was used for rodeos and circuses. We can see the tents of one traveling circus in the older photo, where a sign (not visible) announces “This Way to the Big Show” — words that could well adorn a banner at the MFA today. Not much is known about those circuses. As for the museum, its building came along in 1909. That was an era when architects in both Europe and America loved to make big, pretentious public spaces. The architect was Guy Lowell, who was a cousin of Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell, the kind of family connection so helpful to aspiring young architects. For his cousin’s university, Guy Lowell also designed Lowell Hall, Emerson Hall, the Fox Club, Briggs Cage (an athletic facility), and the president's mansion (now Loeb House). Young American architects in those days flocked to Paris to drink wine and study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. They believed they had to go to Europe if they wanted to get any culture. (One of Guy Lowell's gifted contemporaries, Frank Lloyd Wright, was offered a free education at the school and turned it down, choosing to develop his own kind of architecture instead.) Lowell’s design for the museum is filled with motifs from classical Greek and Roman temple architecture, such as the central entry portico with its four huge Ionic columns. Everything is arranged symmetrically, in a style that’s usually called simply Beaux-Arts. The museum is meant to look like a palace, and it does. Faced with Deer Isle granite from Maine, it’s imposing, but it’s dull. Probably it is best remembered for the sentimental statue of a Native American on horseback, Appeal to the Great Spirit, added by sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin in 1913. Buildings are always changing. Lowell himself added wings to the MFA. So did other architects, including I. M. Pei. Since 1999, Britain’s Sir Norman Foster, a winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, has been working on a proposal to further enlarge the vast museum. The museum wants to add gallery space and cover the open-air courtyards with glass roofs to make them usable year-round. At last count, phase one of Foster’s scheme was estimated to cost $180 million. A construction start is hoped for 2005." -Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - The Art and Soul of the City," Boston Globe, 15 August 2004

New England Conservatory of Music / Student Life, Performance and Academic Center  The New England Conservatory of Music is the oldest independent school of music in the United States. Located in Boston’s Fenway district, NEC’s campus occupies 2.5 acres and includes the internationally-known Jordan Hall. Ann Beha Architects has completed conceptual design for two new buildings, a Student Life / Performance Center and an Academic Center. The project accommodates 200,000 sf of program, including student housing, dining and social spaces, the NEC library, practice and performance facilities, an opera workshop, and extensive campus landscape upgrades.

The Back Bay Fens  The Fens is a park and saltwater marshland in the Back Bay neighborhood in Boston. When the area became heavily polluted in the 19th Century, Olmsted was challenged to restore and reinvigorate the marshy area and create an urban wildlife refuge.