We live in a time of competitive museum-building, when cities unveil new wings at the same pace Target opens superstores, and each new temple of art strives to be more glamorous than the last. But Philadelphia tends to cast a suspicious eye on ostentation. The Perelman addition, meant to relieve the pressure on the museum's overstuffed main building, takes modesty and restraint to a level rarely seen in major art venues.
Rather than dazzling us with peacock architecture, the city's newest museum, which will open to the public Saturday, devotes itself to the care, handling and reverent display of art. The Perelman contains a mere five public galleries - six if you insist on counting an alcove off the lobby. Even the gift shop, which assumes pride of place in many museums, barely gets a corner to itself.
The only new structure built for the Perelman, which took over the art deco headquarters of the defunct Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Co. on Pennsylvania Avenue, is a windowless two-story box made from concrete block.
OK, so Gluckman employed two kinds of block, split and ground face, but it's still something you might see used - much less elegantly - on a big-box store. Gluckman pulls this little treasure house of galleries together like a Japanese ink painting, with a few minimalist strokes. He makes a lot out of almost nothing.
One reason for such frugality is that the bulk of the Perelman's $90 million budget was poured into what museum people call connoisseurship, the essential workaday business of ensuring that the museum's patrimony looks good for future generations of art lovers.
More than two-thirds of the Perelman is consumed by conservation labs, workshops, climate-controlled storage, study rooms, a library, and offices. In our icon- and image-obsessed culture, it takes tremendous self-confidence to spend money so sensibly.
