by Tracy Ostroff

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University opened October 2 with a new building by Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, his first free-standing completed art museum in the country. The $23-million Modern building comprises five rectilinear pavilions that radiate from an irregular pentagonal central courtyard that is covered by a light canopy of glass and steel. The facility is arranged in the landscape to take advantage of the natural contours and open meadows of the site, referencing the university’s Gothic and Georgian architecture.

The Nasher at Duke is the first stand-alone museum in the school’s 80-year history, and long a dream of the building’s patron and namesake, Raymond D. Nasher, who first identified the need for the museum when he was a student at the university in the 1940s. The Duke alum—chair of Comerica Bank-Texas, prominent art collector, developer, and philanthropist—donated $10 million toward the construction of the museum and loaned a good portion of his extensive art collection for one of the first exhibits, “The Evolution of the Nasher Collection.”

The building’s five rectilinear pavilions each contain a specific component of the building’s program: one for the permanent collection, two for temporary exhibitions, one for the 173-seat auditorium, and one for support services such as classrooms, a café, and administrative offices. The five pavilions are placed in a loose radial pattern near the top of a gentle slope that characterizes the site, the architects explain. The atrium offers views to the outside through full-height glass openings between the pavilions.

Gallery serves art, campus, and coffee
“Originally we had a doughnut scheme where we had a central courtyard that wasn’t covered or really occupiable, with the galleries and the circulation happening around that,” says John Kinniard, project manager. They chose instead, he says, “a covered central space that works very efficiently. We use the center for circulation, but it also becomes a gathering place for the university, as well as an orientation for people as they move through the galleries.”

Kinniard says his team tried to keep the architecture neutral and the palette of materials simple. Even though the roof is fairly complicated in its geometry, Kinniard says, 20 feet above the lobby space is far enough away that it does not distract from the art. “We selected it to be simple while reinforcing the idea of the atrium as an extension of the surrounding landscape. We used a green slate in the floor to continue the green of nature, and the precast is buff with some aggregate that picks up on the local Duke stone.”

Controlled natural light and floating art walls soften the angles and create intimate spaces. On three sides of each gallery, concealed clerestories allow natural light to filter down among box beams spaced eight feet apart. “We conceived of the galleries as boxes that could be set up or arranged specific to whatever installation was there,” Kinniard explains. The architects placed solar and blackout shades in the clerestories to allow selective filtering for different exhibitions.

“The central atrium is thought of as an exhibition space,” Kinniard says. “Because of its level of sunlight, though it’s really more appropriate for sculpture and some kinds of paintings.” To get true color rendition, they used a low-iron glass. “We used a 65 percent opaque frit, so we actually cut out 65 percent of the light that comes into the space,” Kinniard says.

Renewed commitment to the arts
The museum is home to more than 13,000 works of art, including the Brummer Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Art, the George Harley Memorial Collection of African Art, a classical collection, and more than 3,000 works of ancient American art. The museum will inaugurate its galleries with two exhibitions: The Forest: Politics, Poetics, and Practice, which explores the theme of the forest in contemporary art and includes works by Petah Coyne, Wolfgang Staehle, and Kiki Smith, and The Evolution of the Nasher Collection, which chronicles the development of the famed collection of the museum’s namesake, Raymond D. Nasher. This exhibition will include works by Rodin, Koons, Picasso, Shahn, Matisse, and di Suvero.

The Nasher at Duke is adjacent to Duke’s Central Campus and between the East and West campuses to serve the Duke community and the people of Raleigh-Durham. “It’s placement in a forested area next to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens reinforces the museums roles as a gateway between Duke and the Research Triangle community,” the architects say. The Nasher at Duke marks the first time that Duke’s collections, programs, and research initiatives in the arts will be housed within one facility specifically developed for presenting and exploring art.

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