Press Release 11.18.04

Transforming the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts into the Racine Art Museum involved dozens of people — architects and designers, arts patrons and museum curators, contractors and steel fabricators — and became more than the sum of its parts. More than a name change, more than a new building, the result of their efforts is a museum —in both the architectural and institutional sense of the word — with the power to transform the community of Racine, Wisconsin.

A new exhibit at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Racine Art Museum: Building an Institution, showcases the collective team thinking that brought together the new museum’s art collection and building into one unified whole. The museum was conceived of from the start as an anchor for downtown development for the city. The building’s most prominent feature, its abstract, backlit acrylic facade, serves literally and symbolically as a beacon for downtown Racine’s cultural and economic redevelopment. The interior spaces, with their white walls and rectilinear geometries, defer to a dynamic collection of contemporary American craft.

Racine Art Museum is an installment of the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s RoadTrip series, which focuses on a different architecturally significant location in the Midwest. The exhibit was made possible with assistance from the Racine Art Museum and Karen Johnson Boyd, as well as with the generous support of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the S.C. Johnson Fund.

The exhibition explores the collaboration between the many groups and individuals whose collective dream made building the museum possible. Their contributions and perspectives were gathered through individual interviews portrayed in the exhibit, along with photographs and drawings of the building as well as a mock-up of the museum’s striking translucent-plastic skin.