Patrons get look at $18M upgrade at Westmoreland art museum
Patrons of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art donned white hard hats Friday for a tour inside the under-construction structure on North Main Street.
Sparks flew as welders assembled the main staircase leading down into the main lobby.
The museum's unfinished rooms are a collection of metal beams, wooden board and concrete floors, but soon, they will be gallery spaces, staff offices and community areas.
The $18 million renovation will add 12,500 square feet to the museum while modernizing the space. It is the building's first major overhaul since the 1950s.
One challenge, according to staff, has been organizing the galleries so that visitors are subtly led through the museum's collection.
“We want to control those traffic patterns. We want to guide them through the museum,” Director Judith O'Toole said.
It's a challenge that chief Curator Barbara Jones said she has been thrilled to take on to establish exhibits within a brand-new space.
“It's like play for me,” she said.
The cantilevered structure that juts out from the second floor over the museum grounds will serve as a starting point for most visitors. It will house a rotating selection of traveling exhibits, as well as a gallery of work made after 1950.
The museum has not featured contemporary work in the past, but a gift of more than 130 pieces from Squirrel Hill residents Diana and Dr. Peter Jannetta, which was announced in 2011, helped to bring the museum's collection up to date.
From there, visitors will be guided through the galleries in reverse-chronological order, traveling back in time through the history of American art. Almost all of the galleries will be on the second floor, no longer divided between the second and first. A small gallery on the third floor will be devoted to artworks on fragile paper.
“The paintings have so many stories to tell about American history and American art,” Jones said.
The collection has swelled while the museum was under construction because of the Jannettas' gift and a bequest of more than 200 artworks from Richard Mellon Scaife, owner and publisher of the Tribune-Review, who died July 4.
“That gift has really filled some gaps for us,” O'Toole said.
Artworks will be rotated into the galleries more often to showcase as much of the collection as possible. The renovation was designed with an expanding collection in mind, O'Toole said.
“We built for the future, just the future is a little closer than we thought it would be,” she said.
The second-floor galleries are covered with graffiti painted by visitors to the “Wrecking Ball” party the museum threw as it closed for renovations.
On the first floor, a new community room will provide space for lectures, entertainment, dinners and special events.
“This is a space we've really never had before,” O'Toole said.
The community room has been informally dubbed the “Sunset Room,” because it will be painted with orange and gold hues that should make the room glow when the sun comes in the windows at dusk.
Visitors said they were impressed by the museum's progress so far.
“I don't even have words for it,” said Greensburg resident Darla Wilson, praising the quality of the workmanship. “They used the best. I think it's really going to bring a lot to our county.”
Jacob Tierney is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 724-836-6646 or jtierney@tribweb.com.
