Milwaukee Art Museum Expansion
www.mam.org
Milwaukee
Calatrava Valls
|
|
|
All Photography
© John E. Czarnecki, Assoc. AIA
|
When the Santiago Calatrava addition
to the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) was fully complete, 32,000
people filled the museum for the October 14 opening (as seen
in the images on this page). That total far surpassed the previous
typical big day for the museum—5,000 visitors—and
the prior daily average of 1,000 visitors. MAM’s average
annual attendance was 165,000 in 1999 and 2000, but attendance
from the May 4, 2001, partial opening of the Calatrava addition
to the end of 2001 was 375,000.
The Calatrava building, demonstrating
the power of architecture, is a new visible symbol for the
city. Whether Milwaukeeans want to admit it or not, in our
media-driven society the Calatrava addition to MAM now is
Milwaukee to the rest of the country and the world.
Robert Greenstreet, dean of the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning,
chair of the city planning commission, and a member of the
21-person architect-selection committee that chose Calatrava
over Arata Isozaki and Fumihiko Maki for the MAM job in 1994,
said: "I’m very positive about the impact that this
can have on the city, in the way in which it stimulates a
level of architectural awareness among the citizenry."
— John E. Czarnecki, Assoc. AIA
Read more:
In honor of the opening of the museum, the Milwaukee Symphony
and the Milwaukee Art Museum commissioned an original piece
from composer Philip Glass. Glass spoke with RECORD about
the experience of composing for a piece of architecture. Read
the interview here.
Plus, find out more about the people
and products that were behind the making of this project.
|
print
this page
e-mail
this page
