During a recent tour of the downtown expansion project of the Museum of Contemporary Art, much excitement was expressed at the idea of birthing a new building, with the seamless addition of new three-story modernist structure blending alongside the Santa Fe Depot baggage building. The original building was built for the Panama California Exposition in 1915 and is the site of the present-day Richard Gluckman-designed MCASD Downtown campus at a projected cost of $25 million.
The expansion is located at the historic and international crossroads in downtown San Diego. The new modernist structure faces the museum’s existing galleries at 1001 Kettner Blvd., designed by artists Robert Irwin and Richard Fleischner in collaboration with La Jolla-based architect David Singer. The expansion adds 30,000 square feet of museum space, in addition to new outdoor exhibition locations and an artist-in-residence studio, which will be occupied by Irwin in preparation for the opening exhibition in 2007. The entire MCASD Downtown campus is unified by a new bilingual LED installation created by artist Jenny Holzer.
The Santa Fe Depot baggage building — a structure on the National Register of Historic Landmarks — is now part of a new three-story modernist structure. Working with preservation architect Milford Wayne Donaldson, Richard Gluckman carefully transformed the 1915 landmark to preserve and re-create many original features of the building, including 32-foot ceilings, lighting fixtures to match early 20th-century globe lights, the use of original brick pavers on the track side and hand-formed Spanish clay roof tiles.
The historic building has been named in honor of MCASD benefactors Joan and Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm Inc. The building features more than 10,000 square feet of exhibition spaces, including the Peter C. Farrell Gallery, the Iris and Matthew Strauss Gallery, the Pauline and Stanley Foster Gallery (for new media) and the Melinda Farris Wortz Gallery as well as the Robert Caplan Artist-in-Residence Studio.
The exterior arched space at the west side of the Jacobs and Copley buildings (which together compose MCASD’s current expansion project adjacent to the historic Santa Fe Depot), will be named the Figi Family Concourse, where sculptures by Richard Serra will be installed. MCASD has commissioned permanent, site-specific works by Serra that were made possible by generous contributions of $1 million from Sue K. and Dr. Charles C. Edwards.
Holzer’s installation uses technology to house thousands of LEDs in clear plastic tubes that she describes as icicles. Roman de Salvo?s work will be in the Copley Building, located in the stairwell. His modular macrame made from electrical conduit will fit coolly into the raw, industrial and utilitarian space and will provide lighting in the stairwell. Glaswegian artist Richard Wright will create new installation works in and around the Jacobs Building with a focus on the Strauss Gallery. His paintings will be located in unusual places that will have visitors craning their necks looking up and down and in unexpected nooks. Ernesto Neto will create a monumental installation of his “Untitled” work in the Peter C. Farrell Gallery in the Jacobs Building. His suspended, polyp-shaped sculptures evoke references to skin and engage the viewer’s tactile senses. The suspended shapes will hang and be filled with fragrant scents and spices, perfuming the air and making the experience a multidimensional one for the visitor, engaging in both sight and smell.
The spaces are handsomely designed and will be euphorically explored by all of San Diego. With the completion of the MCASD Downtown campus, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will provide residents and tourists with two distinctive destinations to enhance its Irving Gill-designed residence of Ellen Browning Scripps, located on three acres of oceanfront property in La Jolla.