When patrons enter the newly remodeled Swope Art Museum in the coming weeks, they’ll find their perceptions of the museum in the wake of its makeover reframed.
“The Swope, Reframed” is the slogan for the reopening.
“The heart of it is not changing, but it has a whole new look for the community to see it,” said Ann Ryan, the TREES, Inc. President helping with marketing the downtown museum’s re-opening.
Swope Curator Amy McClelland added, “Every single thing that we’re doing is making this collection more accessible to the public.”
On Tuesday, a tour of the renovated Swope revealed a number of firsts.
The $4 million project represents the “largest investment in the 125-year-old building in history,” said Anthony Dinkel, the museum’s president since January.
It will also open the first new gallery in decades. “There’s not been a new gallery in my lifetime,” Dinkel said.
Ryan noted that additional space will allow the museum to open four different exhibits simultaneously for the first time, on June 5.
Echoing “The Swope Reframed’s” slogan, the four exhibits come under an umbrella theme, “Terre Haute, Artists Reflected and Reframed.” One exhibit is titled, “Marsh, Stone, Sky: George Burk,” while another will be “Nancy Nichols-Pethick, House of the Spirits.”
Also on display will be “Two-Part Harmony: The Abstract Sculptures of Ann Lee Chalos-McAleese and Andrew McAleese” and “Mary Ann Michna: My Terre Haute.”
Perhaps most significantly, the Swope will be in the market for new work for the first time in 15 years.
“We didn’t have space to put (new art),” Dinkel said. With more space on the walls and in its storage area, he said, “We can start again to think about what works does it make sense for us to acquire now and who are the contemporary artists that we should start bringing into the museum so future generations can experience them.”
New works will join art by Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper and Grant Wood, as well as famous works like “Between Neighbors (Five O’Clock Tea)” by Mary Fairchild Low and Paul Manship’s sculpture “Diana.”
Reopening in phases
It has taken 13 years to raise the money for the remodeling efforts, Dinkel said, adding that his predecessor as president, Fred Nation, “gets a lot of credit for really taking the campaign and rolling with it and taking it across the finish line.” Individual donors primarily paid for the renovations.
After closing its doors to begin the remodeling project in June last year, the museum will open in phases, beginning on April 11, when it will present the largest exhibit of student art in the museum’s history. Work by high school artists was selected by a juror, while elementary school art teachers selected their students’ work for inclusion.
“For kids to come into the museum and be able to see their work alongside Grant Wood and Edward Hopper, it’s something they’ll remember,” Dinkel said.
Additionally, the Contemporary Gallery work has been essentially rehung for viewing on April 11.
The first thing patrons will notice upon entering the museum may be the absence of its old elevator, which was installed in 1948 for $6,000. It has been replaced by a brand new elevator, which Dinkel wryly noted, cost “a little more than $6,000,” facing the street not far from its original location.
The previous elevator could not be employed to move large pieces of artwork — heavy structures needed to be moved from floor to floor by stairs, which is not necessarily safe for the artwork.
“We tested it — our largest painting fits on this elevator,” Dinkel said. There’s one sculpture that the elevator may not be able to accommodate, but that hasn’t been tested yet.
Beyond the elevator, there had been a cramped area in which art not on display was stored that is now a gallery. It improves the flow through the museum and will house sculptures and other large works of art.
“I love the natural light that comes through these frosted windows is unlike any other space in the museum,” Dinkel said. “It’s a completely different type of space to display art than what we already have.”
The Swope has 2,400 works in its collection, of which 85-90% of the collection is in storage, Dinkel said. “Things just stayed in storage, because there was only so much space on the walls,” he said.
“The magnitude of what we have, how it was crammed into a small place,” he added. “It wasn’t conducive to the storage of art, it wasn’t conducive for staff to work on the art, it made it difficult to pull things out to share with the community.”
Rediscovering treasures
The basement, which has state-of-the-art sliding screens lined side by side from which paintings can be hung and more easily seen with plenty of room for ornately gilded frames. There’s also $200,000 worth of shelving storing other pieces.
The new storage area “is so critical to maintaining our collection because without that, the Swope is nothing,” Dinkel said. And yet, he added, “No one will ever see it.”
But Dinkel and Swope Curator Amy MacLennan have gotten an eyeful since moving work to the new storage area.
“As we’ve moved stuff from here into temporary storage and then into permanent storage, we’ve rediscovered all this wonderful work,” Dinkel said. “Amy found this piece that she found in the paper files from the 1800s, a print of Martha Washington’s wedding that we’re talking about having framed and putting out for the America 250 exhibit we’ve got coming.”
“Every day I find something I’ve never seen before,” MacLennan said. “To say it’s eye-opening is just an understatement.”
She points to the Martha Washington print as an example.
“This is perfect, and I hadn’t really even seen it,” she said. “It was covered up by other things. It just needs a little TLC and a frame (to appear in the America 250 exhibit).”
“For me, someone new coming into the organization, it’s been a great time to discover all of this work that I was unaware of,” Dinkel said.
America 250
The America 250 exhibit will open June 30 and include works that had been commissioned by the Kent Bicentennial Museum, which sent prints of the works — created around the theme “What does independence mean to you?” — to 125 museums all across the U.S. The local exhibit will be titled, “The Spirit of Independence.”
America 250 will precede the renovation of the museum’s third floor to open to the public. Initially considered a project a decade down the line, funding provided by the Terre Haute Casino Resort Foundation and private donors allowed the endeavor to be put on the fast track earlier this year.
A work in progress
The third floor still most resembles a construction site, and it is not yet climate controlled. Most of the top story will be used as an event space for Swope receptions; members of the community will also be able to rent it out.
“What I’m so thrilled about is not only will it allow us to host larger events or award ceremonies for some of our exhibits, but it’s a space we can share with the community,” which will bring new audiences into the Swope, Dinkel said. A nearby kitchen area can be used for catering events, and restrooms are being added to the third floor, as well.
Beyond the event space on the third floor will be the new education center, which was formerly on the ground floor at the corner of 7th and Ohio Streets.
“We worked with what we had, but it wasn’t purpose-built for education,” Dinkel said. The education center upstairs is also much bigger, with views overlooking the downtown area for children to enjoy.
“Think about how few places in our community that children can see this much of the city from above,” Ryan said.
A new education director, Meisha Williams from Cincinnati, will start work at the Swope next week. “She can dream big about what education can look like at the Swope,” Dinkel said.
In between the event and educational spaces will be a conference room for both Swope boards and outside groups that want to rent the space.
The goal is to have the third floor completed in time for an August 7 ribbon-cutting.
Future shows include the annual Plein Air competition and exhibition in late June, and the annual Wabash Valley exhibition in the fall.