The Gardner’s new wing takes shape
Photos: SCOTT M. LACEY
Topping Ceremony at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | June 22, 2010
Things are tough all over, but don’t tell local museum directors — the three-year-old “new” ICA has been going great guns, the MFA’s $345 million Art of the Americas wing is scheduled to open in November, and on Tuesday, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum held the traditional “Topping Ceremony” for the completion of the steel frame for its new $114 million Renzo Piano-designed addition. With museum employees and board members (including chairman Jack Gardner, great-grand-nephew of Isabella) in attendance, members of Iron Workers Local 7 hoisted a white-painted I-beam — itself topped with a small Christmas tree and American flag, and signed in Sharpie by attendants — 59-feet to the building’s summit. Site preparation began last summer, and the addition — which will include gift shop, special-exhibition gallery, a 296-person capacity concert hall, artist-in-residence apartments, classroom, conservation labs and archival storage — is scheduled to open in early 2012. _Jon Garelick
