Georgia Museum displays the fine art of expanding

ATHENS -- When fund-raising for the Georgia Museum of Art's  expansion hit a bump in 2004, Atlanta attorney Carl Mullis offered to sell a coveted painting by the late American artist John de Martelly and donate the proceeds instead of the work itself to the museum.

Georgia Museum director William Eiland was quick to tell the long-time patron that he much preferred his painting.

A sale of "Sara," a naturalistic 1941-42 portrait of an elderly rural New Hampshire neighbor of the artist, might have brought a cash infusion in the high five or low six figures. But Mullis, chair of the museum's board of advisors, appreciated Eiland's decision.

"That was the perfect answer, even though he needed money then pretty badly, that the director would be most concerned about getting the art," Mullis said.

It also was very much in keeping with the philosophy that has guided the institutional growth of the GMOA and its $20 million, 30,000-square-foot expansion, which opened to the public this week: It's all about the art and its core role in the museum's educational mission.

Though Eiland and his staff are excited about the expansion's pristine contemporary architecture, they exhibit no sign of an edifice complex. The new gallery wing, with its satiny maple floors and high walls painted a muted feather white, puts clear emphasis on showcasing the museum's permanent collection, whose great growth over the past decade was not well known since there was little space to display it.

Most major museums exhibit well under 10 percent of their permanent collections at any one time, but the busy GMOA had so quickly outgrown its building on the University of Georgia's East Campus that when it closed for Phase 2 expansion and renovation in early 2009, it was displaying 0.3 percent -- yes, less than a third of a percentage point -- of its holdings.

So the opening of the 16,000-square-foot wing designed by New York's Gluckman Mayner Architects is about more than merely showing off new digs; it's also a celebration of the best of the collection, new and old.

Now, 457 collection works -- 7.5 percent of the permanent collection -- are displayed in the new wing's 13 fluidly flowing galleries, which are intersected by a wide central corridor. That's many more than Eiland had in mind, but he yielded to the mothball-shedding enthusiasm of his staff, led by chief curator and American art curator Paul Manoguerra.

"We want a simple, sparse, even austere environment, but I allowed it to happen and even encouraged it to happen," Eiland admitted. The director said he thought the curators were making good choices and, well, if there were ever a time to celebrate profusion, this was it.

After attending a preview, Bonnie Speed, director of Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, said she was impressed by the collection galleries, enhanced student study centers and even the expanded art storage. "This is a wonderful development in the arts and cultural scene in Georgia not only for UGA faculty and students, but also for their general public," Speed said.

The expansion -- which includes an outdoor sculpture garden and an expanded lobby/event space -- had been a long time coming. The museum moved from UGA's North Campus, where it opened in 1948, to the $12 million East Campus building in 1996. The 52,000-square-foot edifice joined the school's Performing Arts Center and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, which also opened that year, to create UGA's Performing and Visual Arts Complex.

Museum and university leaders knew there would be a second, significant construction phase. Looking back at a more robust time for fund-raising, Eiland thinks it might have been possible to have raised money for both phases at once, but there was concern about not asking too much from donors while the school was assembling the cultural quadrangle.

In 2001, the museum launched its $20 million expansion capital campaign, a majority of the funds ultimately coming from private sources, led by the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation's $5 million gift. Not long after the GMOA closed for construction in early 2009, the Lamar Dodd School of Art moved from North Campus into its own new building, completing the East Campus arts quad. As part of the museum expansion, in fact, its quad-facing main entrance was extended outward, symbolically beckoning the 1,000 art majors in the Dodd School.

Those students, who can now take advantage of expanded study spaces to view and research works from the holdings, are "why collectors love to give to this museum," said Mullis, who has donated more than 100 prints and folk art works. "I've given a lot of art that's not on display, but I know it's used because the students are there looking at it."

But Mullis figures the variety that now fills the galleries -- including notable works by Benjamin West, Georgia O'Keeffe, Louis Bouche, Pierre Daura, Lamar Dodd, Howard Finster, Jacob Lawrence and Elaine de Kooning -- will be the best inducement yet for giving to the collection.

Eiland acknowledged that he asked Gluckman Mayner Architects to design the new wing with additional expansion in mind. Thus it was constructed on piers, with the possibility of gallery and storage space being added underneath.