It feels like it was just yesterday -- a beautiful spring day, enjoying the sprawling lawn alongside the gleaming Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on the hillside at Cornell. But it was actually thirty-five years ago, as the University celebrated the opening of its new architectural masterpiece.

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, designed by I. M. Pei, shown in the opposite angle from the below rendering. Photo by Matt Hintsa.

Enjoying a spectacular view of West Campus, downtown Ithaca, the Cayuga Lake inlet, the surrounding hills, and the lake itself, the Johnson Museum building has been likened to a giant sewing machine, set back from the south edge of Fall Creek Gorge. This weekend, Cornell breaks ground on a new wing, which will add space to the Museum based on I. M. Pei's original intent that the building have an underground wing extending north toward the gorge.

Public Event: Saturday, 17 May 1:00 - 3:00 pm Free and open to the public. Free parking at Cornell's A Lot with free shuttle bus to museum.

After a private groundbreaking on Friday for invited guests, the Johnson Museum is hosting a public groundbreaking and 35th anniversary celebration on Saturday afternoon from 1-3pm. The event will include cake and ice cream to celebrate the building's birthday, Japanese drumming and dance, magic, family fun with John Simon, and a live concert by Ithaca's Burns Sisters Band.

When it's finished, projected for the spring of 2010, the new wing will add about 16,000 total square feet to the Museum's existing 61,000 square feet. The addition, the building's first since it opened 35 years ago, will include a 150-seat lecture room, a workshop studio, gallery space, art storage, and office space.

An artist's rendering of the new wing with above- and below-ground construction. Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP/Gil Gorski Architectural Illustration courtesy of Johnson Museum.

At the same time, Cornell will renovate the existing building to provide additional exhibition space, a study center and photographic study room, and a seminar room. Some of this space will become available when existing offices move into the new wing.

I. M. Pei's original concept for the building featured underground floors stretching not only underneath the lawn to the building's north, but under University Avenue right to the edge of the gorge. Early drawings showed underground windows overlooking Fall Creek near the Suspension Bridge.

Modern structural and environmental concerns won't allow the Museum to expand quite that far. The above- and below-ground extension has been designed by the original building's architects at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, including the original architect-in-charge, Cornell alumnus John Sullivan.

Conveniently, when the original building was built, designers allowed for the likelihood that an underground wing would be added to the north. A gallery wall in the northwest corner of the "2L" floor, the lowermost level open to the public, features a knock-out behind the sheetrock. Construction crews will easily be able to open the wall for access to the new wing, without having to remove a portion of the original foundation.

All told, the project will cost about twenty million dollars; about 19 million has been raised to date. Fund-raising has included challenge grants from the Kresge Foundation of Michigan and the National Endowment for the Humanities.