Changing Skyline: Philadelphia Museum of Art expansion moving at a snail's pace

It's not every client who can get the celebrated architect Frank O. Gehry to show up at the groundbreaking for a loading dock. But when the Philadelphia Museum of Art assembled a crowd last week to cheer the start of its modest improvement, there was the snowy-haired, 81-year-old designer, gamely hoisting a shovel and doing his bit to advance a more glamorous project that seems - to outsiders anyway - to be moving according to geologic time.

Gehry's star turn was the first time he has shown his face to the general public here since the museum hired him to design a major addition in 2006 - a full four years ago. In the typical course of such things, the signing of big-name talent would be followed, after a year or two, by the public release of architectural renderings. Yet, other than the design for the loading dock, the marriage between Gehry and the museum has produced no issue.

That doesn't mean they haven't been working on it. Gehry's Los Angeles office has built dozens of scale models demonstrating how he could embed new galleries below the museum's front terrace. Several table-size versions occupy the better part of a room in the bowels of the museum, offering a good idea of what Gehry has been cooking up these last four years. The museum recently gave me an exclusive peek at the design in progress.

The museum's two top executives, director Timothy Rub and president Gail Harrity, stressed that they are still a long way from a final design. There is no price tag attached to the project yet, no funding, and no schedule. But the museum's board has given a thumbs-up to Gehry's concept by authorizing him to develop the design in greater detail. Gehry told me he has eight people working full time on the project.

Because the design is evolving, museum officials declined to provide renderings or let The Inquirer photograph the models. So, readers, you will have to make do with words. Pull out the museum's floor plan and listen carefully.

Ever since the museum hired Gehry, people have been scratching their heads. He is best known for his swirling, sculptural exteriors, like the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. What was the point, they wondered, of having a master blob-maker like Gehry design an addition that will be invisible from the street?