© Brad Feinkopf, 2009, courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects

Nighttime view of the Cleveland Museum of Art's 1916 building and new East Wing

© Brad Feinkopf, 2009, courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects

Interior of the East Wing, looking out to the 1916 building

Chuck Close Pablo Picasso Anselm Kiefer Auguste Rodin Claude Monet Jennifer Bartlett Marcel Breuer Robert Colescott

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

But that’s exactly what Rafael Viñoly told trustees of the Cleveland Museum of Art nine years ago when he interviewed for the job of designing the institution’s massive expansion and renovation. Impressed, the trustees hired Viñoly, and, judging from the fine results so far, they were right to do so.

This June, the museum opened its new Viñoly-designed East Wing, which marks the halfway point in an eight-year, $350 million project that required the removal of other additions built in 1958 and 1983. The East Wing is a lucid and clearly organized setting for art and a vast improvement over the crowded, chaotic galleries it replaced.

Designed as a wedge, arced on its outer side and clad in horizontal stripes of marble and granite, the East Wing doesn’t attempt to upstage its contents — Impressionist and modern artworks that have been in storage or on loan to other museums since 2005 — like the many recent museum buildings designed as works of art in themselves, which is refreshing. The wing also makes a convincing case that the museum should press on with the expansion, not just because of the high quality of the exhibition space inside, but also because it’s only the first of a planned pair of wings intended to frame a large, skylighted central atrium flanked on the south by the museum’s original building, a neoclassical white marble palace built in 1916, and a Brutalist-inspired Education Wing designed by Marcel Breuer and built in 1971.

Museum trustees face the challenge of raising the $138 million still needed to complete the construction amid a global recession and Cleveland’s more local economic struggles as an industrial city trying to reinvent itself in the high-tech age. And though they are optimistic about raising the outstanding funds, they were dealt another blow this week when director Timothy Rub, who led construction of the East Wing since his arrival in 2006, announced he is leaving in September to take over the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He will succeed former director Anne d’Harnoncourt, who died unexpectedly last year at age 64.

Standing still, however, would be an admission of failure. In its current, half-expanded state, the museum requires visitors to take a circuitous underground route from the main lobby in the Breuer building to galleries in the East Wing and the 1916 building, which reopened after a renovation last year, and which houses European paintings and sculpture from 1600 to the 1850s, plus late-19th-century American art.

When finished in 2013, the museum should be a model of classical clarity, with a circulation system of hallways and galleries framing the great central atrium, which will provide an instant sense of orientation.

The 21 galleries inside the new wing, encompassing 25,000 square feet of exhibition space, are well laid out along a clear, north-south visual spine, which is punctuated at the south end with a gallery enclosed in glass on three sides and filled with sculptures by Auguste Rodin. The space overlooks the museum’s leafy surroundings in the city’s University Circle district, clearly sending a message of transparency by creating an environment in which art is connected to the surrounding community.

From there, galleries filled with works by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso extend north, leading to areas displaying works by contemporary artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Chuck Close, Jennifer Bartlett, and Robert Colescott. The East Wing also includes the museum’s first galleries dedicated exclusively to photography, art from the Cleveland region, and contemporary decorative art and design. Windows spaced at intervals reinforce the theme of transparency and connect the interior to the outside world.

The exterior of the East Wing is gracefully sculpted in form, although Viñoly’s use of the pinstripe motif, which echoes the horizontal granite stripes on Breuer’s Education Wing, feels like a simplistic solution to the problem of mediating between the 1971 addition and the 1916 building. Viñoly’s idea was to echo the Breuer building respectfully, while gradually widening the intervals between stripes of dark granite and white marble as the East Wing reaches south to the all-marble 1916 building.

Viñoly’s intentions come across clearly, but instead of paying tribute to the Breuer building, the East Wing has the curious effect of diluting its impact and making it seem smaller, darker, and more subdued than it did when it alone commanded the north side of the museum complex. The juncture of the East Wing with the 1916 building, accomplished with a glassy bridge inserted into a neoclassical colonnade, is both more respectful of the original structure and more satisfying as a dramatic contrast between old and new.

What counts most now, however, is that the East Wing has given Clevelanders a beautiful new setting in which to enjoy beloved masterpieces of Impressionist and modern art. The work completed so far bodes well for the final product, which should rank among the best buildings in America in which to view art.

Steven Litt is art and architecture critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.