Changing Skyline: Gehry's master plan for the Art Museum emerges

For 86 years, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has reigned as the city's most majestic building, a golden crown perched in splendid isolation atop its Fairmount hill. Yet, there is a good reason it is still sometimes called the "Greek garage." Inside, the great temple remains a work-in-progress.

Now, a plan to expand the museum by burrowing deep into its rocky hillside, conceived and designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry, promises to remedy this unfinished business, completing and polishing the masterpiece in time for its centennial in 2028.

Though no start date has been announced, museum director Timothy Rub revealed Thursday that architects were wrapping up construction drawings, a prelude to actual construction. In a lengthy interview, Rub gave the most extensive outline to date of the museum's plans.

It's been a long time coming. The Art Museum first announced its intent to expand in 2005, when the late Anne d'Harnoncourt was still at the helm, and hired Gehry a year later. The museum has finally decided to unveil the project formally by putting Gehry's architectural models and renderings on display. "Making a Classic Modern: Frank Gehry's Master Plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art" opens July 1.

Gehry, who turned architecture upside-down two decades ago with the billowing titanium waves of his Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, is best known for sculptural, otherworldly buildings. But with this design for Philadelphia, he plays brilliantly against type. No evidence of his bravura will be visible on the museum's Kasota limestone walls, and the interior changes will be dominated by straight lines.

This self-effacing strategy has paid off in a big way. It is a fine, thoughtful design, meticulous in its logic and attuned to a city that likes to march to its own drummer.

If the museum can raise the roughly $350 million needed to complete Gehry's laundry list of improvements, the golden temple will emerge both more dignified and more approachable than it is now. All museums are exploring ways to draw in younger visitors, and this design is driven by that goal.

So, entrance doors will be thrown open at street level as a democratizing gesture. Pathways through the enormous, U-shaped building will be made more intuitive by establishing visual connections with the busy city below the hill. Murky spaces, like the Great Stair Hall, will be bathed in natural light. Surface parking lots that mar the west terrace will be banished, replaced by gardens and public space.

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Changing Skyline: Gehry's master plan for the Art Museum emerges