The new parking garage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art along Kelly Drive is finally open and ready for business. After almost two years of construction the final details are being added and work crews have begun cleaning up the site and removing the heavy equipment. The new garage, however, will be missing one detail—automobiles. So delighted with the results of the museum's latest project that board members couldn't help but alter the mission of the new garage--it will now shelter art.
"It turned out so nice that we can't possibly fill it with cars," said museum director Kaitlin Quinn. "It's going to add several hundred square feet to our exhibition space. It really is a blessing. It's quite exquisite."
The official name of the new exhibition space will be: The Pearlman-Tuttleman Gallery Space at Garage.
The added space comes at a perfect time with the Cezanne and Beyond exhibition in town until May 17, the most anticipated exhibition in some time. The museum plans to place half of the French artist's works in the garage for public viewing.
"It's so new and luxurious and with the weather about to turn we know it is a great place to show Paul's [Cezzane] work. Paul would be proud. Paul would just love it. He'd probably want to paint it," said garage designer Phillip Roselli.
The landscaped parking garage was suppose to help with the institution's parking shortage. It was constructed to provide over 400 spaces for museum visitors, but would also serve the Kelly Drive/Boat House Row and lower Fairmount Park recreational areas.
Gaits Contracting, Inc., a Buckingham, PA company and the builder of the garage, was disappointed when informed that cars would not find a temporary home here when visiting the museum.
"We build lots and lots of hideous parking garges from Maine to Florida, but this one was different," said Mike Hanks, president of Gaits. "We have never built anything like this before. This is our masterpiece. The whole crew was looking forward to seeing cars parked here."
Some donors are ecstatic over the new plans for the multi-million dollar facility while others feel mislead.
"I was so moved during the fundraising campaign when we were told that parking was so important for the future of the museum. That without parking the museum could slide into the Schuylkill. I feel a little betrayed," said an anonymous donor.
The Museum's floor plan design experts are estimating that the new space can support up to a thousand works of art. So cavernous is the garage that the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is considering relocating here.
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