Harvard Art Museums Slated to Open Sunday

After a six-year wait, the renovations and expansion of the new Harvard Art Museums on Quincy Street in Cambridge will be open to the public on Sunday, Nov. 16. In a collaborative effort by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Payette, and wHY, the three existing Harvard Art Museums—the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—have been consolidated and integrated by expanding the original site of the Fogg Museum and connecting all of the buildings to the new sloping glazed roof, which will allow controlled, natural daylight into the facility. Originally built by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbot Architects in 1925, the Fogg Museum, built in the Georgian Revival style, was the first of it’s kind to combine museum space, teaching, and conservation in one facility. Staying true to the promotion of scholarship, the entire museum will display the collective 250,000 works of art to both the nearby community and the neighboring campus, in addition to expanded study centers, conservation lab, galleries, and a new auditorium with 294 seats on the bottom level. At the center is the renovated, historic 200,000-square-foot courtyard, converted from an outdoor area to the main entrance area. In addition, a back entrance on Prescott Street has been opened, symbolically communicating that the museum is not exclusively for the Harvard campus.