The youngest of the three designers featured in the Joan Spain Gallery, Ralph Rucci applied lessons from his study of philosophy and literature at Temple University and his interest in simplified artwork to fashion designs, such as the evening dress "The Stingray Swan,” 2001, made of navy silk gazar double-faced duchess satin and ostrich spine.
:Expansions, additions, annexations, reconfigurations and other forms of enlargements have proliferated all over the American art museum world in recent years. This year such augmentations range from acclaimed additions to the Akron Art Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City to expanded, renovated galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art to a heralded expansion of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine.
The much-anticipated public opening of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building on September 15 marked the first expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's (PMA) footprint since 1928. Newly renovated and expanded by Glickman Mayner Architects, the Perelman Building is just across the street from the museum's celebrated hilltop structure. The 1927 Art Deco landmark building with a red terra cotta roof adds space and amenities to one of America's great art museums.
The building is named in honor of Raymond G. Perelman, a Philadelphia native, philanthropist and longtime trustee of the PMA, and his wife, Ruth, who has been active in numerous charitable groups. Avid art collectors with a special interest in modern sculpture, the Perelmans' unrestricted gift of $15 million in 2000 provided crucial support for the museum's expansion.
"The museum's collections began to outgrow available space in our great neoclassical building more than a quarter of a century ago," observes Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the PMA, "and the Perelman Building represents the first giant step forward in our plan to expand the opportunities we offer to the public for encounters with works of art."
This elaborate archway hints at the size and elegance of the newly renovated and expanded Perelman Building. Opened in 1927 as headquarters of the Fidelity Life Insurance Company, the Art Deco landmark boasts a 59,000-square-foot addition designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects. —©David Heald photo
The Perelman Building showcases some of the PMA's most comprehensive, colorful and advanced collections in elegant, contemporary galleries. It offers such public amenities as a dramatic Skylit Galleria and other spaces for showing visual arts, study centers, a new library with a wealth of resources and public displays, a new museum shop, a 70-seat café and a landscaped terrace.
According to the PMA's director of media relations, Norman Keyes Jr, few works will be permanently on view in the Perelman Building. "The idea," he says, "is to have frequent rotation of…light-sensitive collections," plus a large multiuse gallery, with "beautiful arcaded windows on both sides, [providing] natural light" that "shows sculpture to great advantage. It will also house temporary loan shows as well as permanent collection shows down the line."
Featuring twin cathedral-like entrances, gleaming rows of windows and a bright interior, the Perelman Building was called the gateway to Fairmount Park when it opened 80 years ago as headquarters of the Fidelity Life Insurance Company. In its recast role, it constitutes the initial phase of a master plan to dramatically expand and update the PMA, serving in effect as a gateway to the future of the museum.
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