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Glenstone
Glenstone-2018-10-13-courtyard-1.jpg
Established 2006 (2006)
Location Potomac, Maryland, United States
Type Art museum
Collections Contemporary art
Collection size 1,300
Founder Mitchell Rales
Architect Charles Gwathmey (2006 building) and Thomas Phifer (2018 expansion)
Public transit access Bus transport Ride On bus: 301

Glenstone is a private contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland, 15 miles (24 km) from downtown Washington, D.C. The museum's exhibitions are drawn from a collection of about 1,300 works from post-World War II artists around the world. It is the largest private contemporary art museum in the United States, and is noted for its setting in a broad natural landscape.

The museum was developed and financed by billionaire American businessman Mitchell Rales, and is curated by Emily Wei Rales. Artists in Glenstone's collection are required to have already been exhibited for at least 15 years. First opened in 2006 in a building designed by Charles Gwathmey, the museum has been expanded several times between 2013 and 2018 on its 230-acre (93 ha) campus. Its largest expansion was opened to the public on October 4, 2018, with outdoor sculpture installations, landscaping, and the introduction of a new museum complex called the Pavilions designed by Thomas Phifer. In 2019, Glenstone added an environmental center with exhibits on recycling, composting, and reforestation.

Glenstone has been compared to other private museums such as the Frick Collection and The Phillips Collection, and has received generally positive reviews in the press. The museum is open, free to the public, via online booking.

History

In 1986, billionaire American businessman Mitchell Rales purchased property in Potomac, Maryland, in order to build a home. Starting in 1990 Rales began collecting art for that home. Following a near-death accident on a helicopter trip in Russia, Rales decided to take on a philanthropic project, which became the establishment of a private contemporary art museum. Built on land that was formerly a fox hunting club, Glenstone is named for the nearby Glen Road, and because of stone quarries located in the vicinity. Located 15 miles (24 km) from downtown Washington, D.C., the museum's initial 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) Modernist limestone gallery opened in 2006, and admitted visitors two days a week. In its first seven years, the museum admitted only 10,000 visitors.

Glenstone Museum Pavilion Dedication Opening Reception (45030579331) (cropped to Mitchell and Emily Wei Rles)
Emily Wei Rales and Mitchell Rales in 2018

Though several smaller expansions took place in the years after the museum's opening, the largest expansion was announced in 2013 and was completed in 2018, opening to the public on October 4, 2018. With a cost of approximately $219 million, the expansion increased the size of the museum's gallery space by a factor of five, increased the size of the property by 130 acres (53 ha), and included substantial landscaping changes. With the expansion, Glenstone became the largest private contemporary art museum in the United States. In 2019, the expansion was named as a "Museum Opening of the Year" by Apollo.

With the expansion, Glenstone opened to the public, with free tickets available online. In the year following the expansion, Glenstone admitted nearly 100,000 visitors.

After 2018, Glenstone continued to acquire adjacent properties, including lots containing residential homes. Speaking on Public Radio Tulsa's Museum Confidential program in 2019, curator Emily Wei Rales said that future plans do not include substantial expansion, and will likely be limited to "one or two smaller buildings to house artworks, maybe in the woods, maybe on an adjoining property". She also mentioned potential plans to build a conservation lab on the campus.

To encourage the usage of public transportation, Glenstone successfully lobbied Montgomery County to add a bus stop near its campus. The museum admits visitors without tickets who arrive on public buses.

Collection and exhibitions

'Split-Rocker' (2000) by Jeff Koons -- Glenstone Potomac (MD) October 2018 (43688284970)
Split-Rocker (2000) by Jeff Koons

The museum's collection of about 1,300 post-World War II works from around the world consists of paintings, single-artist installations, video installations, sound installations, and both indoor and outdoor sculptures, totaling $1.4 billion in assets. The collection contains only works by artists who have already exhibited for at least 15 years. As a private art museum, Glenstone has been compared to the Frick Collection and The Phillips Collection.

Many of the museum's large galleries feature only one or two pieces, do not contain explanatory text, and are sparsely furnished. While some exhibitions are permanent, the collection rotates through the galleries over time. Pieces from the collection are also loaned to public institutions both domestically and internationally.

Glenstone limits entry to about 450 visitors per day. According to Rales, the limit is imposed to "give lots of space to our visitors, to really give them the time to explore and enjoy". Rales wrote that she used a formula to calculate the optimal number of visitors for the museum's size.

The museum's staff is made up of recent university graduates, including some in postgraduate programs, through its Emerging Professionals Program, a two-year program for aspiring curators. Staff members are stationed in the galleries to answer questions from visitors about the art.

'Smug' (1973 2005) by Tony Smith Glentstone (MD) October 2018 (44970676915)
Smug (1973 / 2005) by Tony Smith

In 2018, the introduction of the Pavilions expansion debuted single-artist installations and exhibitions from artists Cy Twombly, Robert Gober, Pipilotti Rist, Charles Ray, On Kawara, Martin Puryear, Michael Heizer, Lygia Pape, Brice Marden. Other artists who have been on display at Glenstone have included Roni Horn, Alexander Calder, Ruth Asawa, David Hammons, Alighiero Boetti, Kerry James Marshall, Shirin Neshat, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Mark Rothko.

Horse and rider by Charles Ray at Glenstone 2019-07-14
Horse and rider (2014) by Charles Ray

Architecture

Glenstone is noted for its peaceful natural setting, consisting of a cluster of galleries and other buildings set in a large 230-acre (93 ha) wooded campus. The museum buildings are located toward the center of the campus, and visitors approach the galleries from gravel parking lots via a pathway through the property that is about one-third mile (0.5 km) long. In designing the campus, Glenstone's founders made an effort to establish a tranquil experience, leading them and art critics to refer to the museum as part of the "slow art" movement.

Buildings

The original Glenstone building opened in 2006 and was designed by American architect Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. The building is a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) modernist limestone structure with 9,000 feet (2,700 m) of gallery space, located on 100 acres (40 ha) of land. The 2018 expansion added 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) of gallery space in a 204,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) museum structure called the Pavilions, designed by American architect Thomas Phifer. Mitchell and Emily Wei Rales have mentioned several buildings as particular influences on the design: the Ryoan-ji Zen temple in Kyoto, Japan; the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas; the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The Pavilions is built of 6-foot-long (1.8 m) precast concrete blocks that were poured during different seasons to produce variable coloring. Though it is one building, the Pavilions is meant to appear as multiple separate buildings from a distance. The structure contains eleven galleries connected by glass-enclosed walkways, with windows made of 30-foot (9.1 m) panels of glass. The galleries make heavy use of natural light through clerestories, oculi, and skylights. Regarding the architectural approach to the Pavilions, Emily Rales said, "we knew we wanted these discrete spaces where you could essentially enter into another world that happens to be an art installation".

Glenstone's 2018 expansion was a "critic's choice" in The Wall Street Journal's review of the best architecture of 2018, with Julie V. Iovine writing that Glenstone's architecture takes an approach "that offers a sequence of events revealed gradually with constantly shifting perspectives, as opposed to classic modernism’s tightly controlled image of architecture as geometric tableau". In 2020, the expansion was a winner of the American Institute of Architect's Architecture Awards.

In 2019, Glenstone opened a 7,200-square-foot (670 m2) environmental center on its campus. The building contains self-guided exhibits about recycling, composting, and reforestation.

Landscape

The Pavilions is built around the Water Court, an 18,000-square-foot (1,700 m2) water garden containing thousands of aquatic plants such as waterlilies, irises, thalias, cattails, and rushes. The Water Court's design was inspired by the reflecting pool at the Brion Cemetery in northern Italy. Referring to the way the museum returns visitors to the Water Court, Samuel Medina wrote for Metropolis, "Art isn't the heart of the Glenstone Museum, which opened in October -- water is". Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Sebastian Smee wrote of the Water Court:

It’s as if you’ve entered a beautiful sanctuary, possibly in another hemisphere, maybe another era. Although you’ve descended, you actually feel a kind of lift, a buoyancy, such as what birds must feel when they catch warm air currents. You exhale. You feel liberated from everyday cares. You’re ready for the art.

The expansion also added 130 acres (53 ha) of land to the campus, a landscape largely composed of woodland and wildflower meadows. The landscaping was designed by landscape architect Peter Walker's firm PWP Landscape Architecture. The effort included the planting of about 8,000 trees, the transplanting of 200 trees, the converting lawn areas to meadows, and the restoration of streams that flowed through the campus. Glenstone's landscaping is managed using organic products only. This outdoor space hosts large art installations by artists including Jeff Koons, Félix Gonzalez-Torres, Michael Heizer, and Richard Serra.

Legal dispute

In August 2018, Glenstone Foundation Inc., the foundation that manages the museum, was sued by HITT Contracting, the company that managed the construction of the 2018 expansion, for $24 million to cover cost overruns. In October 2018, Glenstone countersued HITT Contracting for $35.9 million, claiming that the project was over budget and that construction issues had delayed the expansion's opening.

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