Work is now underway for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s comprehensive renovation project.
Increasingly in need of seismic improvements and desiring more gallery space for its considerable number of works, the museum at 1130 State St. is undertaking the most ambitious campaign in its history to raise money for the $50 million project.
“The main reason for the renovation came from critical needs,” Larry Feinberg, the museum’s director, told Noozhawk. “It’s because we found there’s a lot of structural work and seismic retrofitting that has to be done.”
The renovations, expected to take five years, include replacing the roof, overhauling the outdated climate-control system and installing a more advanced loading dock.
Some of the museum buildings are more than a century old and are not up to current seismic standards.
With so much work already needed for safety purposes, Feinberg said, the museum decided it may as well tack on other visitor-experience renovations that it’s had its eye on.
“We also thought we needed to make the museum as a whole better serve the public,” he said.
The planned 20-percent to 25-percent extra gallery space, he said, will allow the museum to show off more of its permanent collections, including Asian artwork, photography collections, contemporary art and 19th- and early 20th-century American art.
Art storage eventually will be moved out of the basement, which has been subject to leaks, and onto the ground-floor space.
A multipurpose room-like space will be added for the 25,000 schoolchildren who participate in museum programming each year, Feinberg said.
Additionally, an event space on the new roof could be rented out for weddings and to individuals and corporations to help raise money for the museum, which has a $7 million to $8 million budget.
“We really are going full-tilt right now,” Feinberg said.
With all its permits secured, fences have gone up around parts of the museum.
Though its hours and access points have not changed, the McCormick Gallery, four side galleries — Sterling Morton East and West, Campbell and Gould — as well as Asian galleries upstairs are temporarily closed, and exhibitions have been moved to other spaces.
The current first stage of renovations includes clearing out the McCormick Gallery to add steel reinforcements and more shock-resistant concrete to the walls.
Also going on right now, Feinberg said, are exterior work and replacement of the roof, the foundation and the electric transformer, the latter of which will ultimately serve Santa Barbara’s adjacent Central Library and public parking structure.
Feinberg said the fundraising campaign is reaching its halfway point.
“We’re doing pretty well,” he noted.
The work itself will cost about $42 million, Feinberg added, with the other $8 million going toward the establishment of a facilities endowment to ensure that the museum has money to draw on for its backlog of deferred maintenance.
Annually, more than 100,000 people visit the museum, which houses some 28,000 works of art.
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— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.