On November 28, 2018, Glenstone Museum held a public panel to discuss the origins of the museum’s expansion. Read an excerpt of that conversation, braiding architecture, art, and nature, below.

Paul Goldberger: What made you want to expand beyond the Gallery? 

Mitchell P. Rales: I think we enjoyed the experience of seeing people with happy faces, enjoying the art as well as the integration of nature and architecture. So we decided that this was our opportunity to really go for it, to try to create something that hasn’t been created anywhere in the world. We travel quite a bit, and we see superb architecture, art, and nature, and all these things inform our opinions. Sometimes you see two of those components together, but it’s a rare phenomenon to see all three seamlessly integrated. We learned profound lessons from the many different places that we went to, and came back each time with a more informed point of view. For us, it was about giving the visitor an experience that is different. We all form our lives and our thinking through our experiences. And I can think of a couple of my own experiences in the art world that were formative: when I sat on the floor at the Reina Sofia in Madrid for twenty minutes in front of Picasso’s Guernica, and nobody kicked me out of the room. You don’t really begin to see the picture for the first ten minutes, and then, all of a sudden, you see civilization unfolding in front of your eyes, and you learn so much. You need that time to engage with the art to really understand it in a meaningful and wholesome way. Or the experience of seeing Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and being able to stand in front of it for ten minutes . . . it was an extraordinary thing. So we wanted to create these types of experiences that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere. 

Emily Wei Rales: In the beginning, it was more a function of the fact that we were running out of space for the collection, which continued to grow at a pretty rapid rate, even though the building was finished. We were looking at the volume of work that was entering the collection and we didn’t want it to stay in storage; we’re really committed to the notion that art needs to be seen in the world so that it can work its magic with its audiences. And so, almost as soon as we opened the Gallery, we set about working with Adam on the master plan for the property. The property wasn’t quite as big then, because we’d been working really hard over the past years to expand our physical footprint. We knew it was time to think about the long-term vision for this property, and how we could mobilize our assets. So we started thinking through what another building might look like—we didn’t want another wing on the Gallery, that wouldn’t make sense. We needed to maximize this extraordinary land—to honor its history and its former life as a fox-hunting property while also creating something new and different. That’s when Tom came into the picture. We learned a lot along the way, as Mitch said, traveling around the world and looking at museums and other precedents— sometimes they weren’t even museums. There was one really great trip that we took to the Brion Cemetery in Italy, where there’s a water court planted with these beautiful specimens. Of course, the function of that space is so different—it’s a memorial—but we were really enamored with the architectural language and we wanted to bring it back to this setting. 

PG: What other places or institutions were particularly influential to you? Before you had actually begun to work with Tom on this new building, what places meant the most?  

EWR: At the top of the list would be the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside of Copenhagen. We have always been in love with the way that the landscape figures so prominently there, even in the interior spaces. I can picture in my mind that space with the very, very tall windows, where they often install a Giacometti Man sculpture, and the backdrop is this lush green garden. Those moments when nature and art come together with very sensitive architecture really struck us the most. There’s also a walkway where you see Spoon Woman, another Giacometti sculpture; that walkway’s concept of procession, of going from one space to another while passing through architecture that frames the natural world before you reenter a purely aesthetic formal space—that was really formative for us.  

MPR: There are so many different places around the world that we saw. The Kolumba in Cologne, Germany, is a museum of Catholicism. They had a grand room with these thirty- or forty-foot ceilings, and I remember walking in and seeing a single thirteenth-century painting on an easel. It was extraordinary; it was one of the great experiences that we’ve had. You can go to places like the Menil Collection; the character of the natural light that comes into the building and the campus-like setting, with a series of buildings spread throughout the landscape. The experience of absolute nature at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland was informative. Even our art storage has been influenced by our travels. That space has Andreas Gursky’s name written all over it, because when we saw his storage facility, it really resonated with us, so we drew on it. You could even go down to places like the loading dock, which is also coming from informed experiences that we had elsewhere! 

PG: Tom, do you want to respond with how you recall that process, from your side of the table, as it were?  

Tom Phifer: That process was unusual because it was thoughtful. Most selection processes are stress-filled and not particularly comforting for architects, I think. But this one was different; I did a lot of listening, and there was a real cooperative spirit during those first months. The way we started was probably the most important thing: we didn’t start with drawings, we started with a collection of found images that began to shape the story of what this place should to be.

PG: Adam, you’ve been working on designing this property since before Tom was here; can you talk about how the vision for the land has evolved and how you and Tom have collaborated on this?  
 
Adam Greenspan: For me a full understanding of how you can integrate experiences of nature, art, and architecture came about during the frist phase of Glenstone. I know that became the mission or was originally the mission and goal of Glenstone. I think initially the parts might’ve been thought of as more separate: architecture, landscape, and art. Because of Mitch and Emily’s closeness with Charlie Gwathmey, and the work that we had done, and Mitch and Emily’s deep investment in all of the components, we were able to do something that was more transformative than may have originally been expected. We moved two hundred existing trees on-site in that first project, and we regraded the ground across the whole site in order to make it feel more natural than before, and then allowed natural systems to take place on that ground.

I was surprised at the time: Mitch and I were walking around in the evening when we were laying out trees, and I was surprised at how invested he was in where each tree was going. That’s something that’s continued on many more acres for many more years. When Mitch and Emily were in the process of selecting an architect, we were suggested as a voice and a collaborator in the endeavor. All of the architects were free to call on us and work with us. Tom was the one who really took that to heart and went through all the ideas about how you can connect architecture to nature through light and space, and how to connect the experience of nature, art, and architecture through people’s experience on the site. That first idea of separating people’s vehicular arrival here, having them get out of their cars at a removed site, really melded with something that had developed on the other property, which was that we wanted visitors to begin to appreciate nature as they made their way to the Pavilions’ entrance and be affected by it, in the same way that they might be affected by art and architecture, because all of these things can connect you to something that’s more existential. What set Tom apart is that he was engaged in working together and thinking about that holistically. 

In 2018, Glenstone Museum opened the Pavilions, part of an expansion that includes additional exhibition space and over 130 additional acres of grounds. Designed by Thomas Phifer, the Pavilions features 11 distinct gallery spaces. Glenstone: The Pavilions features photographs by acclaimed architecture photographer Iwan Baan as well as contributions from architectural historian and critic Paul Goldberger; architect, preservationist, and historian Michelangelo Sabatino; and architect and curator Susana Ventura.

This publication documents the evolution of the design and construction of the Pavilions, starting with the selection of architecture firm Thomas Phifer and Partners in 2010 and culminating in a portfolio of images of the finished project by renowned architecture photographer Iwan Baan. Highlighting the collaborative process behind the Pavilions, this book features a transcript of a panel discussion held at Glenstone in 2018 in which Glenstone’s Founders, Mitchell P. and Emily Wei Rales, were in conversation with Phifer and landscape architect Adam Greenspan of Peter Walker and Partners. Noted architectural historian and critic Paul Goldberger moderated the discussion, having served as an adviser during the architectural selection process and throughout every phase of the design, and has also contributed an essay to this volume. Two additional texts offer insightful commentary as well—architect, preservationist, and historian Michelangelo Sabatino elaborates on the typology of the Pavilions and situates Glenstone within the history of museum architecture, and architect and curator Susana Ventura meditates on the visitor’s heightened aesthetic experience of moving through the building.

The book is available for purchase in Glenstone's book store.