It’s A powerful mural, featuring black and white Americans sleeping on flooring, marching, and being beaten by cops during Depression-period protests. But for eight decades, Lewis Rubenstein and Rico Lebrun’s sprawling fresco has remained from public view.
This post by Daniel Wallace from Harvard says that changes this November, when the Harvard Art Museums reopen after a six-yr, $350 million remodel and expansion. Designed by celebrated architect Renzo Piano, the project brings all three of the Harvard Art Museums — the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum — under the exact same roof for the first time. Additionally, it has transformed the sophisticated, increasing gallery space by 40 % and adding study centers, a cafe, in addition to a dramatic, pyramid-like glass roof.
The re installation of the 10-by-5-foot mural indicates a key milestone. But it’s just the beginning. Thousands of artworks, in storage off site through the building, are heading back to Quincy Street.
Nowadays, the Harvard Art Museums seem like a brand-new house right before move-in day. The 240,000-square foot building is well lighted, the floorings recently finished. Stroll during the new, glass-walled study centres and past the cupboards in the Conservation Division; they are apparent and empty. Downstairs, in the museum’s central courtyard, workers unpack and assemble glass instances built in Italy.
The daily progress now is not as remarkable as during building, when bulldozers and bucket trucks rumbled over a marshy pit. Nowadays, advances are measured in the details. Last week, Daniel Wallace from Harvard says that signs were installed marking the entries. While workplaces of the curators stay in a satellite building in Somerville, they see the galleries regularly to manage the setup.
In certain ways, the sophistication of the “Hunger March” mural installment reflects the sophistication of the restoration and expansion all together. Included in the job, the 86-year old facade of the Fogg Museum on Quincy Avenue needed to be maintained. But an earlier variant of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, added in 1991 behind the Fogg, facing Prescott Road, had structural issues and was knocked-down. In addition, Harvard determined to transfer the Sackler Museum, which was in a building across Broadway, into the expanded complex.
A glass seam now visually divides the wood exterior of the new building in the brick of the outdated said Daniel Wallace from Harvard, but inside the museums flow seamlessly via a central stairway and also the renovated Calderwood Courtyard.
Daniel Wallace from Harvard 