With eye on future, Ogunquit Museum of Art hires architect for potential changes
File Photo / Peter Van Allen
The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, near Perkins Cove in York County, includes a three-acre sculpture garden.
The Ogunquit Museum of American Art said this week it has entered into a strategic partnership with the Kevin Daly Architects, which has offices in Los Angeles and New York.
The architecture firm's portfolio includes a range of U.S. projects, including the Hudson Yards tech campus and sky terrace on Manhattan's West Side, as well as additions to the Harvard museum complex and buildings for the UCLA campus.
The Ogunquit museum, which includes a mid-century modern building that sits on three oceanfront acres, said it is seeking "a new vision for the future" what can "welcome a diverse audience" and further its mission.
“Preservation is a key value for our strategic plan,” said Amanda Lahikainen, the museum's executive director. “We grow from our past and without it we could lose our connection to the early artist’s communities and our landscape.”
At the same time, she said the museum hopes to "better serve our growing community, not just in Ogunquit, but throughout the Seacoast region and beyond."
She said the museum faces "challenges with our aging infrastructure, ADA accessibility, collections care and groups traveling by bus.
Kevin Daly Architects will work with the landscape architect Reed Hilderbrand, which has offices in Cambridge, Mass., and New Haven, Conn., and has done work with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Clark Art Institute, the Parrish Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art and MacDowell.
Reed Hildebrand has also done Maine work at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and the Tekαkαpimək Contact Station at the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
“Our sense is that the museum needs to recover some of the elemental simplicity that was inherent in the 50’s building," Daly said in a press release.
"As the original building evolved, the relationship to the ocean and the coastal setting that was the inspiration for artists and visitors alike has been cut off. The site review will be focused on re-establishing a presence on this outcropping and imagining new encounters between visitors and the coast.”
Visitors can explore the museum’s history, including blueprints of the original building in the museum’s current exhibition Architect of a Museum through Nov. 17.
Kevin Daly Architects will lead two in-person, public town hall meetings at the museum on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. The meetings are designed to gather feedback from the local community.
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