The Luce Foundation Center for American Art
opened 2006
Climb to the top of the east wing and you enter what feels like the museum's attic thrown open to the public. Glass cases rise floor to ceiling on two levels around a long hall, and inside them paintings hang frame to frame, sculptures stand shoulder to shoulder, and drawers and shelves hold ceramics, glass, furniture, folk carvings and medals. More than three thousand objects are here, far more than the main galleries can show, arranged not as an argument but as a store. It is the largest visible storage facility of any American art museum.
The idea is simple. Most museums display a small fraction of what they own; the Luce Center puts the rest where you can see it, densely packed and lightly labelled. Every case has a number, and computer kiosks and the museum's website give the full record of each object, so you can chase down whatever catches your eye. Look for the Hiram Powers plasters, the miniature portraits in their drawers, the nineteenth-century marble busts standing in ranks, the pottery and the crowded shelves of folk art. On the level above, the Lunder Conservation Center has glass walls so that you can watch conservators cleaning a painting or repairing a frame.
The centre opened in 2006 when the building reopened after a six-year renovation, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, which has supported American art scholarship for decades. Its home is the old model hall of the Patent Office, where inventors' models once filled similar cases, so the crowded display is faithful to the room's original purpose. Many regular visitors say it is their favourite part of the museum, precisely because nothing has been chosen for you. Allow more time than you think; the cases reward slow looking.
Did You Know? The cases stand in the former Patent Office model hall, where thousands of inventors' miniature machines were once displayed the same way.
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