By Betsy DiJulio
Ten months ago, a twenty-year vision came to fruition on the campus of The College of William & Mary (W&M). There, the original Muscarelle Museum of Art, designed by Carlton Abbott—opened in 1983 and expanded in 1987—boasted five galleries and some 18,000 square feet of space. In February of this year, the reimagined museum—all 60,000 square-feet of it—took flight in what architects Pelli Clarke & Partners describe as a “butterfly-like interpretation of the original structure.” But the recent expansion had been a twinkle in the eye of board members since 2003.
The long history of the museum began with the gift of a 1732 portrait of scientist Robert Boyle to W&M, thought to have made the university the first in America to collect art. But it was a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe that ignited the march toward a museum. By the 1970s, the university had amassed a lot of art spread across campus. A newly minted professor stumbled upon O’Keeffe’s White Flower, a 1938 gift from Abby Aldrich Rockerfeller, hanging in a conference room, removed it for safekeeping, and caused quite a stir which proved to be the catalyst for a proper museum.
A subsequent survey under the direction of then university president, Thomas A. Graves, revealed that the university owned 850 museum caliber works of art gifted over 250 years. He championed the idea for a museum, while the late Joseph L. Muscarelle, Sr. and his wife Margaret P. Muscarelle gave a million-dollar lead gift for the museum in the very early ’80s.
Current director, David Brashear, joined the Muscarelle’s Board of Trustees in 1999, serving as chair from 2004 to 2008. In 2013, he became chair of the capital campaign for a new museum, serving in that role until his appointment as interim director in 2019 and director a year later. When it looked like they wouldn’t be able to “get over the financial hurdle,” the university president asked if he would lead the design of an expansion instead.
“When we shifted to an expansion, we had a challenge,” he recalls. “The existing building spoke a unique architectural language” and the building committee had already been working with Pelli Clarke and Partners for four or five years. Ultimately the 15-member body was meeting twice a week in sprint mode, reviewing four options at a pop. In a pencil-on-napkin moment, Brashear, who had grown frustrated and was losing sleep—and who had completed extensive graduate work in architectural history at Columbia University to go with his Harvard MBA—drafted a design that leaned into angles. The architects liked it, made it “Option 5” for the next Friday’s meeting, and the vote was unanimous: move ahead with it.
Included in the plan was what everyone wanted: a “New York modern gallery feel;” a big, grand lobby with entrances facing both the community and the campus; education and event spaces; a café; and a store. “We wanted to be able to participate in a different way in the mission of the university,” and education was very important to Martha Wren Briggs, the lead donor.
The committee just kept “working it” and expanding the budget to match—ultimately north of $40 million—breaking ground in March 2023 and completing construction by November 2024, which allowed time to move in and stabilize before opening to the public in February 2025. Brashear observes that if someone were to blindfold you, take you to the second-floor galleries, and remove your blindfold, you would think you were in a large metropolitan city museum. But he asserts, “We are part of big museums; we are not competitors, but collaborators. When best practices are brought to our geography, it is great for everyone.”
With 14 galleries and 16 full-time staff members, the three-story museum sports a 42,000 square-foot addition plus about 18,000 square feet of renovated space. It’s appearance honors both Abbott’s original design and the Georgian and Colonial Revival-style architecture of the university. And the museum’s capacity to meet its mission of focusing equally inward toward the academic enterprise and outward as a regional resource has been greatly expanded.
According to Julie Tucker, marketing and events manager, museum membership held steady during construction, after which it mushroomed. Once the new building opened, her team moved all the off-site lectures and pop-up exhibitions back in-house. The work of her department maintains a dual focus on W&M students and the community. Members’ openings, lively First Friday events, book talks, and film screenings join MUSE (Museum University Student Engagement) programs created by and for students. She also directs faculty outreach noting that there is always something in the collection or traveling exhibitions that will “resonate with every class and bring a new perspective.” For example, the environmental focus of the current academic year has allowed the museum to “reach across campus in new ways.”
For Melissa Parris, deputy director of exhibitions, collections, and operations, “with so many galleries, the exhibition side of things has burgeoned.” The work of her and her team involves continuing to refine the rhythm of the schedule as they support university curriculum and community interests, balancing exhibitions of work from the permanent collection with changing exhibitions, including those that travel. She finds particular satisfaction in the museum’s ability to remain nimble in responding to needs, e.g. closing a large show, while continuing aspects of it as a smaller show in a different gallery. But her biggest joy is the “warm reception from the community and region” along with a wider reach and greatly improved visitation, in the form of “a lot of new faces.”
With everyone “thrilled” about the museum, according to Brashear, membership and visitorship exploding, and exhibitions and related programming burgeoning, his current focus is on “broadening the collection, making it more representational,” especially in terms of women, African American, and Native American artists. As a result, he asserts that the museum’s collection of contemporary and near contemporary Native American art is in the top ten nationally: “We keep adding great, great names.”
For more information about the great names headlining current and upcoming exhibitions, visit https://muscarelle.wm.edu/exhibitions/. Muscarelle Museum, 611 Jamestown Rd, Williamsburg, 757.221.2700
