Info

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum - New Exhibition Building

Over the course of 25 years, Gluckman Tang Architects was engaged by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum on multiple projects, beginning with design of the inaugural museum in 1997, and including the Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center & Library, opened in 2001, and a Campus Master Plan that was adopted by the Museum. The Campus Master Plan led to this schematic design for a new 54,000 SF exhibition building.

The new exhibition building sets back from the street to provide a generous landscaped entrance facing the city. The lobby is designed with an expansive window wall overlooking a new garden that connects to the Research Center and to the city streetscape and offers outdoor program area for the Museum.

The stucco exterior of the new building responds to the historic fabric of downtown Santa Fe, while the subtle canting of the surfaces changes their perception in the sunlight and breaks down the scale of the walls. Wooden screens are introduced to provide sun control and soften reflections of glass on the exterior.

Galleries are infused with controlled daylight through skylights, clerestories, and windows, providing exhibition spaces sympathetic to the landscape and light within which the artwork was produced. Flexible education space is designed adjacent to the lobby and garden and allows the Museum to expand its education programming for school children and the general public.

This building triples the Museum’s exhibition area and includes a dedicated changing exhibition gallery. The project provides much-needed collections management space, including art handling, collections storage, conservation lab, and digital photography studio.

GTA completed Schematic Design for the project in 2020, working with Reed Hildebrand on landscape design. The team conducted a series of community engagement sessions and garnered community and Historic Review Board support. The project has been handed off to a local architect for completion based on the GTA schematic design.