Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Nigel Young.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Nigel Young.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Nigel Young.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Nigel Young.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Photo by Chuck Choi.

On the 12th November at a dedication ceremony, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), unveiled a major redevelopment and new wing designed by Foster + Partners. The masterplan reinstates the original formal axis of the Museum and opens it up to the Back Bay Fens and the linear park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1877. The MFA’s new wing creates 53 new galleries and houses the Art of the Americas collections, one of the premier assemblages of American art.

Foster + Partners, working with CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares of Boston, have carefully restored and augmented one of the world’s finest art museums to transform the experience for visitors, opening up the building to the community and consolidating the Museum’s five great collections into a more cohesive and understandable whole.

Founded in 1870, the Museum of Fine Arts is based on a Beaux-Arts plan devised by the architect Guy Lowell. Restoring the logic of the original scheme, the building’s central axis has been reasserted with the reintroduction of the principal entrance to the south, on Huntington Avenue on the Avenue of the Arts, and the reopening of that to the north, the State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance. At the heart of this axis is a new information centre, where visitors begin their tour.

Alongside is a freestanding glazed structure, which has been inserted between the building’s two main pavilions to create the Art of the Americas Wing. Arranged over four floors, the new wing significantly increases the Museum’s exhibition space, enabling some 5,000 works from the collection to be displayed. The project is the first time Foster + Partners has comprehensively designed a complete gallery wing, including installations and fit-out – the plan for the 53 galleries was the result of close collaboration with the Museum’s curators and conservators. Where the central building of the wing meets the axis of the main building, it partly encloses an existing courtyard in glass. This creates spaces for visitors, a café, special events and access to other collections with a new gallery for special exhibitions beneath.

Designed to be energy efficient, the courtyard is naturally lit and the galleries have state-of-the-art climate control. The gallery spaces are configured to allow art to be displayed with a more obvious sense of clarity and light. Surrounding the museum, new landscaping is designed to strengthen links with the Back Bay Fens, laid out by Olmsted, architect of New York’s Central Park. The landscape design follows Olmsted’s Romantic tradition of winding paths and informal planting to draw the greenery of the Fens into the building. In particular, the Fens landscape is drawn into the heart of the Museum, encapsulating the new Courtyard and American Wing.

ARCHITECT: Foster + Partners, London, UK, www.fosterandpartners.com. CLIENT: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. LOCATION: Boston, USA. AREA: Ruth and Carl J Shapiro Family Courtyard: 12,1840 sq ft. Ann and Graham Gund Gallery: 8,280 sq ft. Education Center: 4,300 sq ft. Jean S and Frederic A Sharf Visitor Center: 4,920 sq ft. PROJECT TEAM: Benedicte Artault, Robin Blanchard, Jan Coghlan, Chris Connell, Aaron Davis, Gennaro di Dato, James Edwards, Dagmar Eisenach, Morgan Fleming, Kristin Fox, Herbert Gsottbauer, Anthony Guma, Sean Hanna, Rie Haslov, Judith Kernt, Ismael Juan Khan, Kohelika Kohli, Abel Maciel, Peter Matcham, Pablo Menendez Paz, Aidan Monaghan, Yat Lun Ng, Mathis Osterhage, Silvia Paredes, Carol Patterson, Michael Pelken, Michael Richter, Katherine Ridley, Il Hoon Roh, Ingrid Sφlken, Kinna Stallard, Matthew Stokes, Diego Suarez, Jane Tiley, Alexis Williams, Oliver Wong, Richard Yates. ARCHITECT OF RECORD: CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc. DESIGN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS: Buro Happold. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS OF RECORD: Weidlinger Associates. DESIGN MEP ENGINEERS: Buro Happold. MEP ENGINEERS OF RECORD: WSP Flack + Kurtz. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd. CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT: George B.H. Macomber Company: Pre-Construction Services, Skanska USA Building Inc: Enabling Contractor, John Moriarty & Associates: General Contractor. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT: Epsilon Associates. GEOTECHNICAL CONSULTANT: McPhail Associates, Inc. CIVIL ENGINEERS: Nitsch Engineering Inc. PERMITTING: Goulston & Storrs. CODE CONSULTANT: Hughes Associates. TRANSPORTATION CONSULTANT: Howard/Stein-Hudson. LIGHTING CONSULTANT: George Sexton Associates. ACOUSTIC & AV CONSULTANT: Acentech Inc. SIGNAGE AND WAY FINDING: Roll Barresi & Associates, Inc. EXTERNAL ENVELOPE CONSULTANT: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. CATERING CONSULTANT: Hammer Design Associates. SECURITY CONSULTANT: Ducibella Venter & Santore. HARDWARE CONSULTANT: IR Security & Safety Consultants of New England. SPACE PLANNING: Robert Luchetti Associates Inc. PEDESTRIAN FLOW CONSULTANT: Orca Consulting Group. EXISTING CONDITIONS SURVEY: Existing Conditions Survey Inc. SPECIFICATIONS WRITER: Kalin Associates, Inc. ELEVATOR CONSULTANT: Van Deusen Associates. DATE: 2010.

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