March 31, 2005
Burke Museum to expand gallery space
The Burke Museum’s popular 2001 exhibit about the Antarctic voyage of Ernest Shackleton and his ship The Endurance was realistic for reasons both good and unfortunate, remembers Roxana Augusztiny, the museum’s interim director.
It was an excellent and well-attended show with one downside, she said: “The exhibit was designed for about twice the space we had.” Several large pieces associated with the show weren’t even brought in due to lack of room.
“What you got on our ‘Endurance’ exhibit was perhaps the cramped, below-decks feel” of life aboard ship, Augusztiny said with a laugh.
While a cramped setting worked fine for showing the Endurance and its fearless crew, it’s not so good for museums in general, and this spring, the Burke — otherwise known as the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture — is doing something about it.
The first phase of an ambitious four-phase “Strategic Plan for Growth” is taking place this spring at the Burke. In this first phase, the Special Exhibits Gallery will be doubled in size. Phases two, three and four, which stretch perhaps decades into the future, will see the museum expanding to its south, north and westward sides respectively, in time widening and deepening its footprint on the UW campus.
But Augusztiny stressed that Phase One is the only one funded so far, at just under $1 million. All the hoped-for expansions will be paid for exclusively with money raised by the Burke, with the University’s permission, she said.
“Phase One of the museum’s expansion is well under way,” Augusztiny said. That phase involves doubling the Special Exhibits Gallery from 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, reconfiguring the museum store and admissions desk and creating a new director’s office on the lower floor, near the café. “That will allow us not only to show more of our own material, but to accept much larger traveling shows.”
Work began on the expansion in mid-March and is expected to continue through May, with a grand re-opening scheduled June 25. That’s also when a major new exhibit will open, “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land,” featuring photographs of the 19.5-million-acre refuge, one of the last untouched arctic ecosystems in the world. That exhibit will run until Dec. 31.
During construction, the store and gallery will be closed but the rest of the museum, including the permanent galleries and the Burke Room, will remain open for business. School tours and programs for members will continue uninterrupted during the construction period.
Augusztiny said the second phase, expected to cost about $10 million, will involve adding a visitor services pavilion on the museum’s south side, moving the store and entrance to the ground floor and adding more restrooms. Extensive renovations of basement offices and collection storage areas will free up room on the ground floor for a long-needed addition.
“One of the things that will give us is an auditorium. That would be super,” she said. At a recent lecture linked with the popular exhibit “The Burgess Shale: Evolution’s Big Bang,” Augusztiny said, 150 people showed up when the facility only comfortably hosted about 50. “So we’d very much want to have a 130- to 150-seat auditorium for smaller in-house programs, and Phase Two would bring us that.”
Phase Three, which could yet be several years away, would bring a 35,000-square-foot addition on all three levels of the building, as well as renovated office and storage spaces and utilities. Augusztiny estimated that total at around $35 million.
Phase Four, a dreamier goal still many years and perhaps $100 million away, she said, would bring an expansion to the Burke’s west side and an underground parking garage. “I hope I am still among the living” when that is accomplished, Augusztiny joked.
Augusztiny said the Burke has had to turn down shows because of lack of space and insufficient environmental standards, which only make the expansions and improvements all the more needed. She said the plans were ambitious, but also on the conservative side.
“What we have is a plan that will take us however long it takes us,” she said.
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| ‘Two Males Battle Mask’ by Salish tribal member Gary Sheena is among the works recently donated to the Burke Museum. |
First Nations collection donated to Burke
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture has long been known for its extensive collection of nineteenth-century Northwest Coast Native American art. Now, a major new gift of more than 400 pieces is helping to continue that chronology up through the 20th century to the present.
The donated pieces, which the Burke plans to begin exhibiting in 2007, are all First Nations art from throughout the Pacific Northwest Coast, including 132 masks, 42 argillite sculptures, 37 prints, drawings and collages as well as bowls, rattles, drums, boxes, garments, panels and sculptures.
The pieces all come from the collection of Arthur Steinman, a Florida resident and longtime art collector who began acquiring Northwest Coast pieces in 1999. The donated works represent the talents of 155 contemporary artists. Press notes from the Burke state that Steinman selected the Burke for his donation not only because of its international reputation in the field of Northwest Coast art, but also because of the Burke’s ability to make the collection accessible to the public and to scholars.
