In 2021, Williams College announced plans to build an entirely new art museum on its Williamstown, Massachusetts campus. Its current home in Lawrence Hall is almost a century old, with its last expansion in 1986. Now, the college has released the design for the new museum, which will be located at the former site of the Williams Inn on the rotary intersection of Routes 2 and 7 in the center of town. Museum director Pamela Franks tells WAMC that the new facility is expected to open in 2027.
FRANKS: Since 1986, our collection has doubled, and the program of exhibitions and the program of teaching with art has just grown tremendously. The fact that at our 100th birthday, we're looking at having the first purpose-built building for the Williams College Museum of Art is really extraordinary, because it's going to allow us to do all of the things that this museum is particularly poised to do.
WAMC: Now, Williams has settled on a design for this space. It will be taking the spot of the former Williams Inn in the heart of Williamstown. Talk to us about what this is going to look like and why you opted for the designers you went for.
The museum, as you say, will be located at the site of the former Williams Inn. It's right as you enter the town and right at the gateway to campus. So, it's going to be a really strong statement of the importance of art and the possibilities of learning with art and human connection around art right as you come into Williamstown and into Williams College. SO-IL, the architects that we're working with, are a Brooklyn-based firm, and it's a group of about 20 architects led by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu. And they really got the mission, the teaching mission of the museum for the college, the way that the museum serves as a public face for the college and really showcases what's possible in a liberal arts education when you bring art into the equation. They have a really strong track record of sustainability, and specifically sustainability in art spaces. So, the fact that they were very attuned to displaying our educational spaces and to the natural surroundings all really spoke to us. And then in the selection process, we learned that they actually spend quite a lot of time, and have for the last 20 years, in the Berkshires. They have a home – Jing and Florian are a married couple, as well as co-founders of SO-IL – and they have a home that they spend time in in Great Barrington. So, they're part time in Brooklyn and part time in Great Barrington, and they're really involved with the arts in this whole region.
Williams College has prioritized trying to reduce its carbon imprint on campus. How is this new design going to play into that larger scheme?
So, it's super exciting for us to be able to go for the IFLI Living Building Challenge core certification for sustainability, and that is probably the most ambitious sustainability certification that we could go for. And it's really a holistic view. It's both about the carbon impact of making the building but also the ongoing operations. And so, some of the things we're doing- It's all electric, it is going to be a mass timber building, it's drawing from sustainably forested wood in Canada, the light in the building is really human friendly, the energy use of this building is actually about 70% lower than the benchmark average for similar museum buildings- So, it's an incredible opportunity for us to think about what the long-term energy sustainability is going to be built.
Now, for folks who are so used to seeing the Williams Inn standing there at that rotary in Williamstown, give us a sense of what this is going to look like to the passerby.
It's a beautiful organic structure with a surrounding porch that draws you in. There's a lot of transparency. The walls that surround the five programmatic pavilion areas of the building are glass, and so you can see life inside, you can see right through the glass, see art, see life. There'll be a cafe facing the south, right from the, sort of the rotary, you'll see people enjoying a meal there together. Probably the most distinctive feature of the building is the roof, which is an overarching roof that covers all of the program areas. It is a curved form that really resonates with the surrounding mountains and feels very light and open and welcoming and gives- It’s sculptural, really, and it gives the whole building a sculptural presence. So, you move around the building, and the appearance sort of shifts and the shape sort of takes form as you move towards the building. The roof itself will be aluminum, a kind of anodized coated aluminum with a matte surface, so that'll add to the light feeling. Once you get inside, the mass timber structure is exposed, so you'll see wood, you'll see the wood structure and the ceiling. It'll be both very warm and legible as wood but also very legible as a structure. So, the building is itself a teaching tool. It’s basically telling you how it was made by leaving that structure exposed, and it's also sort of teaching the lessons of sustainable materials by making those very visible and present in the actual experience of the building.
Walk us through the timeline- I know the building is not set to fully open until 2027, but from here, from March 2024, what are the next major benchmarks in that journey?
So, we're completing design development now in March 2024, and we will be moving into construction drawings next. So, everything gets much more technical. Groundbreaking in the fall of 2024, construction for the next couple of years, and then of course, we'll need to move into the building, bring the people in, bring all of the art in, and then open in May of 2027 if all goes well. But sometime in ‘27, for sure.
