National art in a new light

THE light is what a visitor notices first, streaming into the corridors and showplaces of the landmark Greek Revival building that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, reopening this weekend -- just in time for Independence Day -- after a six-year, $283-million renovation.

The effect of uncovering 550 windows and two city-block-long skylights in what was once the U.S. Patent Office is nothing short of exhilarating, training a fitting spotlight on the nation’s collection of American art and portraiture. It is also historic, rescuing the original architect’s 19th century intention of a grand and open space from a 20th century preoccupation with a darker, more interior modernity.

“The concept is really back to the future,” says Marc Pachter, director of the National Portrait Gallery, best known for Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington but with a permanent collection of nearly 20,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and photographs, many of them contemporary. “The mid-20th century restoration made the building feel less like itself.” But now, working with detailed historical documents, he says, preservationists “have rediscovered the building’s innate genius.”

That genius, says Smithsonian American Art Museum Director Elizabeth Broun, is in how the newly integrated museums honor their tradition -- inventors seeking patents -- by reinventing the experience of looking at art. “This building was always a place for what’s new,” she said as she escorted a reporter through SAAM’s side of the building, which showcases more than 41,000 artworks in all media spanning more than three centuries. “Part of what we wanted to do during the renovation is to think about the future.”

First came repairing the bones of the building, designed in 1836 by Robert Mills and amended by rival Thomas Walter. Led by the Washington firm of Hartman-Cox Architects, designers replaced the 550 windows with laminated glass that allows the light in while filtering it to protect the art. They restored marble floor pavers and replaced worn encaustic tiles in the Great Hall with historically accurate replicas produced in England. They put in new electrical and plumbing systems, fire protection and a copper roof. And they created a new, and newly shared, joint entrance for the Portrait Gallery and SAAM, the first federal art museum in the nation’s history, predating the Smithsonian Institution. They built a 346-seat auditorium, for lectures, films and performances -- with a state-of-the-art sound system and a concert grand piano.

Then they got really creative. The result is two innovations that are creating buzz.

The first is the 10,000-square-foot Lunder Conservation Center, the first conservation facility in the United States allowing the public to see, through floor-to-ceiling glass walls, the work of examining, treating and preserving art. Conservators -- who have the option of closing the windows when concentration requires -- will work side by side, one from each museum in each of the labs.

The museums asked designer Isaac Mizrahi to create aprons for the conservationists, the denim design another subtle Americanism for museums dedicated to art in America.

The second innovation is the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, the first visible art storage and study center in Washington, allowing visitors to see 3,500 objects on display in 64 secure glass cases -- a voluminous increase from the 900 objects available for viewing in the old space.

“At the most fundamental level, we are allowing people to see resources they hold in common,” says Broun. “At a more sophisticated level, it lets people see the choices we make.”

The excitement over the Luce and Lunder “is enormous,” says Claire Larkin, SAAM’s special projects director, who consulted with more than 35 experts to refine the concept and generate program ideas. “We’ve inherited a beautiful space. Now we’re inviting the public behind the scenes.”

“The whole spirit of this reopening is a populist one,” says Pachter. “In those five labs ... we will make available to everyone what used to be VIP access.”

The U.S. government paid $166 million toward the renovation, with private donors picking up the balance. Part of the bargain restorers made with lawmakers is that all of the building, which spans a two-block area from 7th and 9th streets Northwest and from F and G streets Northwest, be used for the public -- so administrative offices moved across the street.

“Our promise to the government was that if they gave us the money, we would make sure all the space was open to the public,” says Broun, adding that she hoped the conservation labs would become a magnet for scholars and schoolchildren.

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A sizable survey

SAAM holds the world’s largest collection of American sculpture, as well as Colonial portraiture, 19th century landscapes, American Impressionism, Latino art and contemporary crafts. More than 7,000 American artists are represented, among them John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Rauschenberg, Nam June Paik and Martin Puryear.

As she guided a pre-opening tour, Broun told the story of one bronze that had languished in anonymity. As curators were going through storage areas to recatalog and rephotograph every item in the collections, filmmaker Ken Burns produced a documentary about a boxer, Jack Johnson, an African American who had scandalized white society in the early 20th century not only by defeating his white opponents but by marrying white women.

One curator remembered the 28-inch sculpture of a black male nude by Arthur Lee. Research determined that “The Ethiopian,” created in 1912 and acquired by SAAM in 1990, was actually a likeness of Jackson. As a result, the bronze is now on display in the permanent collection.

Like the sculpture’s rescue from the bins of history, much in the two museums newly recalls the original instinct of Pierre L’Enfant, who designed Washington and wanted the space to house a nondenominational cathedral or a pantheon to the nation’s heroes. Instead, on July 4, 1836, President Andrew Jackson designated it for the U.S. Patent Office, which remained there until 1932, when the U.S. Civil Service Commission moved in, converting the building’s magnificent spaces into office warrens for bureaucrats. Within 20 years, the structure had fallen on hard times. Developers proposed tearing it down, but that idea ignited a nascent preservation movement, and in 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the building preserved.

In peeling away layers of history, directors and curators also delved deeper into the meaning of the museums’ collections. For the Portrait Gallery, this meant an exploration of celebrity and an expansion of the permanent collections to include contemporary heroes such as basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and the late actor Christopher Reeve. It also conducted a contest for a new portrait of an American. After receiving more than 4,000 entries from every state, a jury chose 51 works, on display at the reopening.

For SAAM, it meant selling off “non-American” art (except for works bound to the museum by bequest restrictions, such as Rubens’ “Madonna and Child”) and the rediscovery of the breadth of its holdings.

“The renovation gave us a chance to open every box and assess what we had,” Broun says.

It also opened the way for the museum to showcase temporary exhibitions on loan from other institutions -- such as the William Wegman show from the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass.

The museums -- now jointly known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, after the Las Vegas foundation that donated $45 million toward the renovation -- also attempted, where possible, to have their collections echo one another. As visitors walk down one hall on the first floor, they can see on one side some of SAAM’s remarkable collection of 7,000 WPA murals -- the Works Progress Administration paintings commissioned by the U.S. government to employ artists during the Great Depression. On the other side is the Portrait Gallery’s collection of Jo Davidson busts of famous Americans from the 1930s, among them Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Albert Einstein.

Elsewhere the echoes are more subtle, more complementary. On one curved staircase, there’s a painting of “Grant and His Generals” by Ole Peter Hansen Balling, part of the Portrait Gallery’s collection. On the second floor off the staircase is SAAM’s collection of Civil War works.

The future for the museums is “a greater openness, a greater transparency, literal and not, a greater insight into how we make decisions,” says Broun.

Despite the reopening, not everything is ready for viewing. The Kogod Courtyard, to be completed in late 2007, will drape a steel-and-glass canopy over the previously open space that joins the museums. The courtyard’s architect, Norman Foster, a Briton who studied at Yale, also designed the Great Court at the British Museum.

Still, for most who have seen the new museums -- and even those who have lovingly worked on them -- the main glory is in the light.

“The single most transforming thing was reopening 550 windows,” Broun says. “The light pours in. It suffuses the space.”

Moreover, the transparency reconnects the building with its newly trendy neighborhood, an urban village corridor that includes the International Spy Museum, the Verizon Center and a sprinkling of fusion cuisine restaurants.

“When you are inside the building you can see out, to the neighborhood, and they can see in,” Broun says. “It’s like we’re connected to the universe again.”