After years of delays, the Peabody Essex Museum is moving forward with its expansion plan, adding a gallery wing to the existing complex and a massive off-site facility for managing and conserving collections.
The plan, which the museum announced Wednesday, represents a significant departure from its earlier intent to build a 175,000-square-foot addition to the existing museum. The new design, by contrast, calls for 40,000 square feet in new gallery space and an 80,000-square-foot off-site facility known as the Collection Stewardship Center. The museum hopes to break ground next year, with a projected completion date in 2019.
One thing that the museum says has not changed, however, is the guiding principle of the fund-raising campaign for the expansion: an ambitious effort to build the endowment that has so far raised more than $570 million toward its final fund-raising goal of $650 million.
“We never defined our campaign by the amount of square feet we planned to add to the museum, and we don’t think that facility expansion necessarily translates into a better art museum,” said Dan Monroe, the museum’s director and chief executive officer. “Building an endowment has been and remains our highest priority, because it provides long-term financial sustainabiltiy and increases the ability on our part to innovate and support programs.”
The fund-raising campaign, which will give the Salem institution one of the largest endowments of any museum in Massachusetts, calls for $350 million to be allotted to the endowment, $200 million for physical expansion, and $100 million to infrastructure improvement.
Monroe, who switched architecture firms after the original architect, Rick Mather, died in the middle of the initial project, described the new plan as a “superb solution” that would enable to museum to meet its objectives.
“We realized that there was no way to proceed with [the original] plan,” said Monroe, emphasizing that the museum was still in the early design phases when Mather died. “It would have been impossible to do and maintain our priorities for our campaign.”
He added that although the former design called for more built space, it also would have required the museum to tear down existing structures. The new plan, though smaller in gross square footage, leaves those earlier structures intact, resulting in a net gain of around 20,000 square feet more than the previous plan.
“Dividing our facility expansion project into two components turns out to be a highly cost-effective way to meet our highest-priority needs,” said Monroe. “It avoids overinvestment in facilities at the expense of endowment and programs.” He added that the smaller new wing “provides the most important and critically needed gallery space.”
Those new galleries, which will be part of a three-story building on the museum complex’s northwest corner at Essex Street, where the Asian Garden currently stands, will be dedicated to exhibiting objects from the museum’s permanent collection. The garden will be relocated to the western end of the museum, and the PEM’s original structure, the East India Marine Hall, will be showcased with a new, two-story glass atrium.
The project will bring the museum’s overall gallery space to 100,000 square feet, which the museum maintains will make it among the 20 largest art museums in the country.
“It’s really improving and connecting and clarifying existing conditions that were already there,” said Richard Olcott of Ennead Architects. Olcott, whose firm designed the expansion to the Yale University Art Gallery, added that one of the project’s challenges was to help unify the museum’s many buildings, which range from the 17th century to the present.
“It’s really important to have the gallery space, but also all the connecting space for how you move through the buildings,” he said. “It’s like a time machine —
Monroe said the museum had yet to identify a location for the expansion’s second prong, the off-site Collection Stewardship Building. He added that the facility, which is being designed by Boston-based Schwartz/Silver Architects, will provide a “state-of-the-art” conservation lab for the museum’s 1.8 million objects. It will also house the museum’s registration and collections-management facilities, and offer opportunities for scholarly research.
“It provides the opportunity to really meet the highest standards in terms of collections care — both in terms of conservation work, but also preventative care,” said Monroe, who added the facility will probably be no more than 20 miles from the museum. “It will also enable us to have the collection far more accessible for the work we do in terms of organizing exhibitions and providing support for scholars and researchers.”
The campaign has already resulted in significant changes to the museum, including the 2013 renovation of the Dodge Wing, which expanded its temporary exhibition space by 14,000 square feet. The museum also is renovating the Phillips Library, where the staff has digitized some 250,000 records.
Still, board president Robert Shapiro stressed that the PEM’s physical expansion is secondary to its larger goal of expanded programming and financial stability.
“The dominant part of the campaign has been building up of financial strength and endowment,” said Shapiro. “In and of themselves, the buildings have never been thought to be the centerpiece — they weren’t and they aren’t. They’ll be wonderful buildings, but they are to serve the programmatic and exhibition vision that we have.”
As part of the expansion, Monroe said, the museum intends to create new installations for “virtually all” of its collections, as well as enhance its K-12 educational programming and launch several digital initiatives over the next five years.
“We are first and foremost focused on the quality and effect of the experiences we provide at PEM,” said Monroe. Not only will the physical expansion allow the museum to meet its financial goals, he said, “the new wing will actually be quite handsome.”
Malcolm Gay can be reached at malcolm.gay@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @malcolmgay.