Cincinnati's three major art museums are moving along with construction projects all scheduled for completion in spring 2003.

        Cincinnati Art Museum is in the midst of creating the Cincinnati Wing, which will hold its rich collection of paintings and decorative arts from 1810 through the present.

        The Taft Museum of Art has broken ground, and excavation is under way for the 70-car parking garage that is the underpining of a newly redesigned single-wing construction.

        The Contemporary Arts Center has workers experimenting down by the river on how best to pour the concrete for an elaborate curl that will become the signature feature of its new building.
       

Contemporary Arts Center/Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art

        Twenty-two feet below Sixth and Walnut streets, construction is proceeding in a wave.

The Contemporary Arts Center gets a new home at Sixth and Walnut streets. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

        “Do some concrete and do some steel. Do some concrete and do some steel,” says Charles Desmarais, the CAC's director. “They're adding concrete and steel in three phases.”

        The last steel beam of the 125-foot-high building will go into place about Aug. 1. The lower-level floor was completed last week. Now Turner Construction is focused on the biggest challenge of them all: how to pour the giant curl of concrete architect/designer Zaha Hadid calls the “urban carpet.”

        “The curl,” says Mr. Desmarais, “comes up from the sidewalk, extends through the lobby and becomes the back wall. Turner has done several tests on how to pour the concrete. There's a site along the river where a whole series of concrete walls have been poured that didn't work.”

        This is good news, Mr. Desmarais says, because it shows the wall won't go in without a guarantee the procedure will work. There have been other instances of trial and error occuring along the way, like the miscommunication about environmental controls needed for the heating, air-conditioning and ventilating systems.

        “They're now up to the critical standards you need in an art exhibition environment,” Mr. Desmarais says.

        Then there was the situation with the crane. Building a 125-foot high building in a tight space on a busy urban corner (Sixth and Walnut streets) isn't easy. The CAC found that American-made cranes have horizontal booms that swing freely in the wind. In this case, that meant it could swing right into the adjoining building with disastrous results. So Turner turned to Germany for the 158-foot Luffing Jib Tower Crane that has a 133-foot horizontal fixed boom. It eliminates the danger.

        While the building continues its climb over Walnut Street, senior curator Thom Collins is working full-time on arranging the museum's opening exhibition.

        “He has about 25 artists from around the world — some of the most prominent names working in contemporary art today,” says Mr. Desmarais. “I think the show will be really challenging and really accessible and fun. The artists Thom is working with are more interested in engaging the audience than with theoretical ideas.”

        It's a tall order for one man, and Mr. Desmarais allows that the CAC's staff is relatively small. Plans are to add six to eight people between now and next year with the first new hire announced Tuesday. Cincinnatian Matt Distel was named assistant curator of exhibitions. The museum is looking for a director of visitor services — a big job considering 2003 is Ohio's bicentennial.

        In December, the museum will close its doors to the public so staff can concentrate on the 2003 opening rather than divide its time between future and current shows. It is around this time that the walls will be put in and the gallery spaces framed. The staff will move into the new space in March 2003. The museum will reopen in May.
       

Cincinnati Art Museum        

        The 18,000-square-foot Cincinnati wing constitutes the first major construction project undertaken by the museum in nearly a decade. Scheduled for opening on April 27, 2003, the museum has raised $2.9 million of the addition's $6.8 million budget.

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Cincinnati Art Museum's new wing will house paintings and decorative arts. (Michael E. Keating photos) | ZOOM |

        The wing's 15 galleries, one-fifth the size of the museum's total gallery space, will house rotating installations designed to tell the history of Cincinnati art from 1788 to the present. More than 400 objects from the museum's permanent collection of sculpture, painting and decorative arts — 70 percent of which have never been on view — will rotate through the display.

        “The Cincinnati Wing will tell the magnificent story of Cincinnati art and celebrate our national and international importance as an arts center in the 19th century,” says Anita J. Ellis, director of curatorial affairs, who came up with the idea for the wing. “This new space will display the splendor of the Cincinnati story as never told before.”

        The new space already has been defined with the installation of the walls, which are getting their final coat of paint. The 3-inch width oak flooring is in but needs to be stained. Most of the ceilings are finished and fitted with lighting tracks. Lighting pins will be installed shortly, and baseboard and door molding are almost finished.

        CAM's deputy director Stephen Bonadies says some of the larger architectural elements are incomplete, such as a protective wall in the fountain room that can't be installed until after the artwork is in.

        “We expect the space be turned over to us by the third week in June,” he says. “At that point we will start to bring the artwork into the space, lay it out, fine-tune the arrangement with the curators and begin installation.”

        As simple as that sounds, Mr. Bonadies admits there are challenges ahead.

        “We are laying the installation out on paper,” he says. “The challenge is how well our plan applies to the physical space. That's where the final horse-trading takes place. We really want to tell a very rich story and want to make sure we have the right artwork in place.”

        Because the museum owns more work than it can display, curators have to edit collections to make sure their selections tell the most compelling story.

        Lighting is paramount to the new building, but it is the exterior lighting that may be the big draw.

        “We are trying to establish a greater connection between our museum and the community,” Mr. Bonadies says. “We want to make sure it is lit properly so at night the whole face of the building comes alive and has presence and invites people in. We want to give people the opportunity to see inside.”

        One of the sights visitors will behold will be the newly commissioned work of a contemporary Cincinnati artist.

        “It is premature to say who it is,” says Mr. Bonadies. “We are looking at a couple of people.”

        The artist's works will be mounted in the fifth of the five new galleries that have been designed to accommodate rotating shows.

        “With this space we want to have the flexibility to also show light-sensitive works from the permanent collection such as costumes and textiles and works on paper,” Mr. Bonadies says. “We are looking to program that space to draw from those collections and also feature the work of contemporary Cincinnati artists. We say of, by or for. It could hold work about Cincinnati, by Cincinnati artists or work in a Cincinnati collection.”
       

Taft Museum of Art        

        Plans for the Taft Museum of Art's new addition have undergone a complete redesign since they were first presented to the public in May 2001. The museum has been closed since construction began in November.

        “We started out with a two-wing concept,” said Taft director Phillip C. Long. “After initial bids from contractors and construction people we found the project came in way over budget. In light of the concerns of 9-11 and the aftermath — the impact on the economy — we felt it was too big of a project. So we went back to the drawing board.”

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The Taft Museum of Art's project will include a new wing and parking garage (Ernest Coleman photos) | ZOOM |

        The new plan, 33 percent or 12,000 square feet smaller than the originally proposed construction, came with an additional $500,000 in building fees. In December the board approved both the redesign and the additional costs to build the now $18 million project. Earlier this month the museum received a gift of $400,000 from the city, bringing the total money raised to $14.8 million.

        Initially envisioned as two north and south wings extending out from the main landmark building, the new plans call for a single eastern wing built above a 70-car parking garage.

        “Right now we are excavating for the parking garage,” says Mr. Long. “On the interior of the existing building, we are beginning to remove the ceilings and mechanical systems for replacements or upgrades.”

        The new structure will be connected to the former home of Charles and Anna Taft by a corridor where the museum's 60-seat cafe will be located.

        “This scheme touches the house very lightly,” says Peter Hoyt of Ann Beha Architects. “It touches the house in only one place. It is more respectful to the house.”

        According to Mr. Hoyt, while downsizing the plans for the museum's expansion, the architects discovered a 1917 plan for an addition Charles Taft had drawn up and was considering for the north end of the home.

        “We ended up pursuing that direction,” he says. “We now have a much better scheme.”

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