The Rubell Museum’s latest location is just not the clinically sealed, synthetic surroundings that so typically defines the design of latest museums. Situated in Washington, D.C.’s Southwest neighborhood, the museum’s galleries sit completely inside Randall Junior Excessive Faculty, a traditionally Black, brick public college constructing renovated by preservation-minded structure agency Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB). Visually formed by uncovered heavy timber rafters, bricks—some marked with many years price of drywall protection—iron detailings on staircases, and terrazzo flooring that’s the strongest visible reminder of a public college, the constructing has texture and historical past.

Don and Mera Rubell started accumulating artwork within the Nineteen Sixties, and had a plethora of connections to the New York artwork scene as Don’s brother Steve co-owned the town’s well-known membership, Studio 54. The household opened its first museum in Miami to the general public in 1993, exhibiting its amassed personal assortment of latest items. In 2010, Don and Mera, alongside a group of builders and the collaboration of their son, Jason, acquired the location that was the previous Randall Junior Excessive Faculty. The constructing had been vacant for quite a few years, and though quite a few growth plans had been tossed round, together with a failed acquisition by the Corcoran Gallery of Artwork, it got here into the palms of the Rubells. 

In a metropolis formed by its public museums, together with Gordon Bunshaft’s Hirshhorn Museum and different Smithsonian-managed establishments, the Rubells commissioned BBB to design a non-public museum—free to metropolis residents—that would present a house for modern artwork in contrast to another in The District. Though situated lower than a mile from the Capitol and the Nationwide Mall, Southwest D.C. is way from a vacationer vacation spot. The neighborhood underwent a basic postwar city renewal course of, and has now seen a wave of redevelopment, together with vital housing building and Perkins&Will’s not too long ago accomplished Southwest Library.

Conveying the varsity, which had decayed in its years of emptiness, into an artwork museum was not essentially intuitive. The constructing itself, with a brick facade, brick inside partitions, oak flooring, and uncovered heavy timber ceiling, confirmed its age; the principle core opened in 1906, and enlargement wings opened in 1926. Regardless of its state, as BBB companion Hany Hassan advised AN, “the constructing stood the take a look at of time.” The query was not whether or not to hide the outdated vestiges of the constructing for a smooth modern museum, however how a lot of the constructing to indicate.

There was no intention for the Rubell to placed on the airs of the town’s public museums, they usually hoped that the brand new constructing would be capable to serve the neighborhood, not simply vacationers. In contrast to museums with extra institutional mass, design choices mirrored private requests from the Rubells, alongside, after all, BBB’s personal motifs. Hassan advised AN that the design group didn’t need the structure to overpower the artwork within the galleries, but, it felt irresponsible to disregard the constructing’s historical past.

At its entry a small glass pavilion was constructed and upon moving into the museum and passing by the admission desk, guests enter a principal corridor, previously the varsity’s auditorium, and stroll by way of a doorway that used to mark the auditorium’s proscenium. Previously residence to tiered seating, BBB opted to infill the area with a flat concrete ground that will swimsuit a gallery area. The spacious room—virtually cavernous when not crowded—exhibits the constructing’s ware to friends from the onset of their go to. Staff left bricks uncovered, and re-exposed others hidden by drywall, together with a sequence of Palladian arches that enable pure mild in on the street-facing facade. 

Presumably probably the most distinctive side of the museum is its pure lighting. BBB’s design altered the home windows to make them much less ornate—to forestall them from drawing consideration from the paintings—and left them of their authentic places. In lieu of tinting the home windows, curtains had been put in over every window to subdue daylight reaching mediums that require particular lighting circumstances.

Continuing by way of the museum, galleries are organized throughout three flooring of the previous college, together with the basement. It’s right here the place it turns into evident BBB doesn’t undertake the polished, surgically-precise look of latest museums. Aside from the previous auditorium, patchmark interventions on the historic oak floorboards present the constructing’s fault factors from its derelict stage of life. The place new floorboards had been put in, there isn’t a try and mix them with the outdated, or to artificially age them. An analogous design strategy was taken to the ceiling, the place the unique construction’s heavy timber rafters are left uncovered, and the place wooden needed to be added, it’s once more clear the place interventions had been made. The newly-installed sections of wooden stand out within the ceiling, with their stamped logos and product specs left on show.

Parts of the constructing’s mechanical techniques are additionally revealed on the ceiling, leaving it with an industrial really feel. White spraypaint bleeds onto the bricks at sure factors, and remnants of outdated drywall weren’t completely cleaned off. Whereas intentional—and irksome to perfectionists—they’re a reminder of the handwork that went into the constructing, each now and a century in the past. Whereas these uncovered components distinction with the white plastered partitions behind a lot of the paintings, additionally they mitigate its starkness.

Wandering by way of the galleries can, at instances, really feel such as you’re strolling by way of a slender condo entry. Whereas some wall sections had been faraway from the constructing’s authentic plan, most had been left intact, and in consequence there isn’t a intuitive path by way of the area. Central foyers orient guests at every ground, however circulation inside every degree is left free-flowing. 

Guests can orient themselves to the surface world at most factors throughout the galleries. The expertise of being within the museum doesn’t drive guests to enamor themselves wholly throughout the world of the gallery—although that is definitely attainable—leaving any sense of path relying upon a museum information map. Whereas this side is a product of the literal adaptation of former lecture rooms into galleries, additionally it is a stance towards the usually denaturing expertise of visiting a gallery.

For a museum whose intent is to proceed to deal with modern artwork that addresses stress factors in American society, it was necessary for it to be rooted in a construction that held the historical past of its neighborhood. Whereas the artwork feels secure towards naked white partitions, strolling by way of imperfect brick archways between gallery areas is a separate expertise from winding by way of the fluidity of the Guggenheim, or the palatial historical past of the Louvre. As Jason Rubell stated, the “artwork is the organs… the constructing is the blood and guts.”