Rather, it was what the loading dock means for the future: Its construction is the linchpin for the museum's massive $500 million expansion project, first laid out more than four years ago.
Timothy Rub, museum director, made the broad point: "The construction of the new Art Handling Facility is vitally important, not simply because we need to maintain the highest standards in the care and handling of works of art, but also because this is a critical step - underline critical step - in our efforts to make the museum's collections more accessible and to serve the needs of the community more effectively than we can do today."
Currently, the museum's loading dock is on the northeast side of the building, off Kelly Drive. But before 1975, that great arched doorway served as a main public entrance to the museum. It leads to a massive vaulted corridor that runs the entire width of the building to an arched entry on the southwest facade facing the Schuylkill.
Moving the loading dock from the Kelly Drive side to the river side will allow the museum to open up the vaulted corridor, one of the most astonishing spaces in any public building in the city - deep under the museum, yet flooded with natural light from open window wells along the museum's front terrace facing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Pritzker Prize-winning Gehry, designer of the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was hired in 2006 to study the building and come up with an expansion plan. He has chosen to open up the vaulted corridor, which will provide access to new gallery spaces carved out of the earth beneath the museum's terrace.
