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Exhibition Wall Text:
THE EAST BUILDING: CELEBRATING 25 YEARS
Introduction
On 6 November 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that Paul Mellon and his sister, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, had offered to provide funds for a new building for the National Gallery of Art. With this gift they would fulfill the vision of their father, Andrew W. Mellon, founder of the National Gallery of Art, who in 1937 had asked Congress to set aside land for this purpose.
When Andrew W. Mellon's children offered their gift, the museum's needs were clear. Additional space was required for public services, exhibitions, and the growing collection of twentieth-century art. Plans also had been made for an expanded library and a new art history research center. Yet neither the Mellons nor the museum's trustees knew what form the structure should take nor who should design it for them. This installation explores the history of the site, the museum's steps in selecting the architect, and I. M. Pei's own creative journey in designing this new and noble structure. The East Building (initially called the East Wing) was constructed with funds from Paul Mellon (1907--1999), Ailsa Mellon Bruce (1901--1969), and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It opened on 1June 1978.
Part I
Site and Setting
The plot of land that was set aside for the Gallery's expansion is located between Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall at the foot of Capitol Hill, an awkward site at one of the city's most prominent locations. Its trapezoidal shape results from the logic of the geometric city plan established by Major Pierre-Charles L'Enfant in the late eighteenth century, in which streets and parks are delineated by great axes and diagonals extending from the United States Capitol Building throughout the city.
During the nineteenth century, the area at the foot of Capitol Hill grew into a busy commercial and residential area with little of the stateliness of L'Enfant's original vision. By the turn of the twentieth century, civic and government leaders were beginning to call for more dignified development worthy of the nation's capital. In 1901/1902 the Senate Park Commission (known as the McMillan Commission after its sponsor, Senator James McMillan) proposed a new plan, based on that of L'Enfant, to bring greater formality to the city's core. In keeping with the commission's plan, during the next decades streets were regularized, and the National Mall was gradually cleared. By the 1960s civic leaders were again hoping to reinvigorate the city core and the National Mall, this time following modern planning concepts. Late in 1961 President John F. Kennedy established the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space to recommend how new government buildings should be designed. In 1962 Kennedy created the President's Council on Pennsylvania Avenue. The National Park Service proposed a new master plan for the National Mall in 1965.
Part II
Envisioning the Building
In March 1967 the National Gallery of Art trustees asked Pietro Belluschi (1899--1994) to advise them as they began to plan the expansion of the museum. An eminent architect and former dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture, Belluschi accepted the task with the understanding that he would not be a candidate for the commission.
His first step was to study the site and sketch a series of options for the structure. More than a decade before, Eggers & Higgins, successors to John Russell Pope's architectural practice, had proposed a scheme for a symmetrical, classicizing building. Belluschi added other possibilities, including an extension to the existing West Building, a structure facing Pennsylvania Avenue that closely reflected the shape of the site, and a building that was mostly underground. Each of these alternatives had advantages as well as evident flaws.
Belluschi realized that at a time of rapidly evolving architectural styles, the achievement of a grand building would be a difficult challenge. He wrote, "In this period of transition, architecture has not greatly distinguished itself in the creation of noble works." His list of candidates included Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Louis I. Kahn, and Kevin Roche, as well as I. M. Pei. On 9 July 1968, after studying the recent work of these architects, the trustees selected I. M. Pei (b. 1917) to design the new building.
Part III
Designing a Modernist Monument
From the beginning, I. M. Pei believed that the new building should be a freestanding structure designed in the modernist idiom. It should respect the museum's West Building and other classicizing structures on the National Mall and yet should provide a sharp contrast to their style. To achieve his goals, the architect took a conservative approach to modern architecture, adapting and refining its forms to create a unique architectural statement. He later said, "I don't experiment with architecture unless the idea is seriously tested."
Footprint and Floor Plans
The architect's first challenge was to resolve how the building would fit its trapezoidal site. Pei realized that the shape could be divided into two triangles: an isosceles triangle whose base was bisected by the primary east-west axis of the West Building, and a smaller, right triangle whose edge would parallel the National Mall. He later wrote, "I sketched a trapezoid on the back of an envelope. I drew a diagonal line across the trapezoid and produced two triangles.... That was the beginning." During the next months, Pei and his design team experimented with these shapes to create a plan for the building. They explored the properties of triangles and other geometric forms, and also studied plans that evolved along a non-perpendicular grid. Other modernist architects had used similar approaches. Over time Pei and his associates refined and simplified the design, in the end emphasizing triangular shapes.
Mass and Transparency
Even while working to understand the two-dimensional organization of the building, the architect and his design team envisioned its three-dimensional form in sketches of its structure, interior spaces, and roof. In contrast to architects working in the earlier international style who had used glass walls to create nearly transparent spaces, designers during the 1960s turned to a more sculptural approach in which solid walls defined the building mass and contained the interior. In keeping with this trend, Pei and his team experimented with massive sculptural structures and roof forms that extended the building's triangular logic into three dimensions.
By early 1969, the organizing geometry of the plan for the East Building was clarified as the corners of the primary triangle evolved into exhibition rooms stacked in towers that defined the building's exterior form.
Pei and his design team also sought ways to open the solid, sculptural building to its urban environment. Eventually the architect realized that the two primary triangles organizing the building plan could be pulled apart to create a slot that would open the museum to the outside and visually make Washington's monuments part of the interior. He thus achieved a balance between mass and transparency. The decision to separate the organizing triangles also led to a clear articulation of the space for the study center, effectively creating a separate office structure organized around a dramatic six-story courtyard and library.
Part IV
Interior Space and Atrium
To help the architects envision the interior space, Pei called on artist/architect Paul Stevenson Oles to show how the designs would appear if built. In his initial drawings, the main exhibition area extended across much of the ground level, with a garden court on the floor above. This upper floor was gradually cut away to open the entry level to natural light from above, leaving several bridges and balconies. This complex space was eventually simplified into a large triangular atrium articulated by an open, wedge-shaped mezzanine and narrow bridge. By choosing the equilateral triangle for the atrium footprint, the architect ensured that the building design would resonate with the logic of L'Enfant's geometric plan for the city.
After deciding on the atrium's features, Pei and his team turned their attention to the design of a satisfying roof for the enormous space. By January 1971, the architect had accepted the idea that it should be covered by a high skylight system that would open the space to bright light and changing weather patterns and allow museum visitors to glimpse the towers above. The height of the skylights seemed to dwarf visitors, however, and Pei experimented with other solutions. The architect finally turned to the building's basic triangular geometry for his dramatic solution: a sculptural space frame constructed of tetrahedrons with bases the shape of isosceles triangles and with proportions the same as the atrium footprint. Connected nodes and bars span the 16,000-square-foot area and support the tetrahedrons.
By January 1971, Pei had accepted the concept of a large open atrium with a high skylight above. These drawings show the development of the skylight system into the dramatic space frame that finally took shape in June 1971.
The early conceptual sketch for the East Building plan to the right suggests the eventual footprint of the atrium, which is exactly the shape of the grand triangle of the city plan shown in the photograph above. The architect was deeply aware of the symbolic importance of the site and the city plan. His greatest success may have been in unifying the structure's geometry and the shape of the surrounding city, with its symbolic references and historical resonance. These three drawings show the evolution of plans for the atrium as the high mezzanine floor was gradually cut away, enlarging and lightening the central courtyard on the ground level.
Part V
Materials and Structure
To execute his monumental design, the architect called for refined materials and precise craftsmanship that would reveal new expressive possibilities in the modernist idiom. Design, structure, and materials are integrated in a unified whole that becomes a work of art.
Marble surfaces extend without ornamentation inside and outside the building. Cut from the same Tennessee quarries as the exterior marble of the West Building, the stone links the buildings and gives the new structure presence and dignity.
Concrete was equally important for the architect's elegant expression. Instead of the industrial concrete that was used in many other structures of the time, Pei called for a more refined mixture with ground marble added. The concrete was poured into hardwood forms built with the refinement of cabinetry. The result was a carefully modulated, slightly glistening surface in which the fine wood grain remains visible. The columns behind you in this room are beautiful examples of this technique.
Ceiling coffers and the dramatic atrium space frame derive from modernist structural elements that are here transformed into eloquent elements of building design. Although fabricated of contrasting materials, they incorporate the proportions of the overall building geometry and create a resonant totality.
Every part of the East Building is constructed with extraordinary skill, precision, and attention to detail. Craftsmen ultimately earned twenty-three awards for their work.
Dedication
From Opening to the Present
When the East Building opened to the public, most critics praised its elegance and sophistication, but some expressed uncertainty about its departure from the conservative architecture appropriate to the National Mall.
Others were dismayed by the atrium, which seemed to them wasteful and impractical. Yet the public embraced the new building with enthusiasm. More than one million visitors entered during the first two months that it was open. In the subsequent twenty-five years, the East Building has successfully housed the museum's growing collections and programs. Nearly two hundred special exhibitions have been held in its versatile spaces.
The East Building also has broadened perceptions of the proper nature and function of the art museum in the late twentieth century and has become a influential source of ideas for museum design. In part owing to the success of the East Building, I. M. Pei has been asked to design many other museum structures ranging from the Grand Louvre, Paris, France, to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland, Ohio, and the Miho Museum, Shiga, Japan.
At the dedication of the National Gallery of Art East Building on 1June 1978, Paul Mellon said, "It was the architect, I. M. Pei, whose imagination and enormous sense of dignity has produced this great modern work of art." He concluded, "This building is the product of many minds, intent on giving America their best: and we are happy to turn it over to you, Mr. President...to be dedicated forever to the use and enjoyment of the people of the United States."
General Information
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Ave. NW, are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery’s Web site at www.nga.gov.
Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the Fourth Street Entrance of the East or West Building to permit X-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. Any items larger than 17 X 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms. For the safety of the art work and visitors, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor’s back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left at the checkrooms.
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