When does construction start and when will the new museum building be open to the public? The current building remains open until September 3, 2007, then closes to prepare for construction as well as renovation of the Omni Theater. After about 24 months of construction, the new building is expected to reopen in the fall 2009.
What will happen to the museum’s exhibits and programs during construction? During construction the museum will offer a strong outreach program to children and families and will host numerous hands-on exhibits on the lower level at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, which is continuing its operations. The museum’s vast collection of artifacts is already in storage. After a four-to five-month upgrade, the Omni Theater will reopen and remain open during the remaining construction period. Museum School will be located in a temporary village of portable classrooms surrounding a play area adjacent to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.
What is the square footage of the new building and how much bigger is it than the current facility? The museum will grow from about 100,000 square feet to 115,000 square feet. These figures do not include the Omni Theater, which is roughly 18,000 square feet. So the new total square footage is 133,000 square feet.
Why does the new building face Gendy Street? One of the museum’s goals is to create a lively, inviting plaza area with beautiful landscaping that will serve as an entry way to the new building and a focal point for the southern end of the Fort Worth Cultural District. The idea is to create a campus-like environment. The plaza area will make it easier and more pleasurable for people to walk between the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame and the Will Rogers Memorial Center.
Who are the architects selected for the project? The museum selected the internationally acclaimed architectural firm, Legorreta+Legorreta, to design the new facility. A committee comprised of members of the museum’s Board of Trustees selected the firm following a thorough competition in 2005. Ricardo Legorreta, who owns the Mexico City-based firm with his son, Victor, is a 2000 Gold Medal Award winner of the American Institute of Architecture. The Gold Medal Award is the highest honor the AIA confers on individual architects.
Why did you select these architects? The Architecture Selection Committee, an ad-hoc committee of members of the Board of Trustees, selected Legorreta+Legorreta after following a thorough and methodical process. The committee members agreed:
That the new facility be fun -- that it mesh with the creativity of the exhibits inside. Legorreta + Legorreta’s use of color is playful and attractive. The firm creates welcoming spaces that are both engaging and reflective.
That the plaza and surrounding buildings be an anchor for the southern end of the Cultural District.
That it was important to find an architect who understood the importance of exhibit design and architecture working in complement. In their presentations, Victor and Ricardo Legorreta exhibited a love of children and a magical vision for creating spaces that stimulate learning and discovery by children and their adult companions. They have created numerous children's museums and other museums that both attract and “envelope” the visitor.
That the new building itself would be nationally acclaimed, as are many of our local museum institutions. The Legorreta + Legorreta firm has created extraordinary buildings worldwide and has created an innovative new facility for Fort Worth.
The committee also welcomed the firm’s reputation for working well with clients, being great listeners, and staying on schedule and on budget. This has definitely been our experience.
What is happening to Burnett-Tandy Street? Burnett-Tandy Street will be closed in May 2007 with plans for relocation near the museum’s north drive. Closing Burnett-Tandy creates a safe pedestrian crossing area between the museum and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. The museum’s ExploraZone exhibit opens in May inside the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame’s Featured Exhibit Gallery. The museum’s architectural plans extend the new building to the south across Burnett-Tandy by approximately 100 feet. The Fort Worth City Council approved the road’s closure for this purpose in January 2007.
Will the museum remain open during construction? Yes, we will continue operating during construction. Because the museum provides such a rich learning environment, we believe it is important for our community to have a place to learn and experience science and history without interruption. During the entire construction period, Museum School will be located in a village of portable classrooms across the street to the south, thanks to a generous loan from the Fort Worth Independent School District. A variety of hands-on exhibits will be hosted on the lower level of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame which is continuing its operations. The Omni Theater, an IMAX dome, will remain open except for several months for an upgrade of its seating and sound system and to separate the mechanical systems from the current building. During the summer of 2008, the museum will bring to Fort Worth CSI: The Experience, an immersive, interactive forensic science exhibit related to the TV show.
Will the museum’s programs change? What does the future hold for Museum School and the Noble Planetarium? Building “from the inside out,” our new building will be built around our nationally recognized and dynamic programs. The new building will enable us to enhance our current programs and make them available to a larger audience.
The highly popular Museum School, which offers preschool and elementary programs that combine science, history and anthropology with art, music and literature, plans to expand. Plans are underway to strengthen its scholarship program so more opportunities are available to underserved children. A new emphasis on the museum’s vast collections – making them more visible and accessible – will create rich opportunities for adult learning as well as cross-generational programming. The new space for Museum School will be on the north side of the building near the Omni Theater. It will have six sunny classrooms and an enclosed courtyard area for play and learning “to give children a sense of freedom without fences or signs that say you cannot go out,” says Ricardo Legorreta.
The new Noble Planetarium will be transformed into a state-of-the-art facility with 3D digital capability, a larger dome and a Zeiss Spacegate full-dome digital projection system. A waiting/exhibit area will have four large viewing screens giving guests live, current, up-to-the-minute views of the earth’s own star, the Sun, along with the latest real-time images from the Hubble Telescope. The planetarium will be able to communicate with other planetariums in the nation for programming, particularly New York’s Hayden Planetarium, with whom it shares the same leading-edge Acuview software. The museum’s real Sputnik artifact and meteorites will be on display in this area. An internationally-recognized consulting firm for planetariums, Visual Acuity of London, is advising the development of the new Noble; Visual Acuity’s clients include the Hayden Planetarium and the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
How will the museum be different when it reopens in the new building? The new facility will allow the museum to select from a greater variety and higher grade of traveling exhibits and blockbuster show that require more square footage and higher ceilings than exist in the current building. As part of the museum’s long- range plan, we will also offer more historical exhibits.
Established museum programs and exhibits will continue in the new building along with some soon-to-be new favorites:
The defining feature of the new museum, reflecting its core focus on learning, is the Studio Learning Galleries, which guests will see immediately when they walk into the main entrance to the building. Inside these five, glass-walled studios, guests will see teens tinkering with technology, children creating, teachers in intense discussion. The highly visible studios will house the museum’s DesignIT Studios program for teenagers; educator workshops, a distance learning studio for public school classrooms; telescope-building classes, hands-on demonstrations and more. Guests will be able to experience and learn more about relevant science and history topics happening today as they are played out in real time -- from breakthroughs in nanotechnology research to space travel and the discoveries of new species. ExploraZone exhibits from the San Francisco Exploratorium will be at the core of the Studio Learning Galleries.
Another new exhibit space, the Energy Adventure, will integrate the museum’s long-standing dinosaur collections with the story of Fort Worth’s dynamic energy industry to illustrate important geological, scientific and historical concepts. Current Barnett Shale exploration throughout North Texas provides a perfect “teachable moment” to connect the story of natural gas production to a broader story about energy and how it originates. What is energy? Where do we get it? How do we produce it and what is the impact? These questions will be probed, and a dynamic entry theater experience will take visitors on an unforgettable journey through geologic time.
Museum staff and exhibit planners surveyed the best children’s museums in the country for the Fort Worth Children’s Museum to be inside the new building. This bright, sunny “museum within a museum” will invite young children to play and explore with science and art activities similar to those found in the museum’s current KIDSPACE gallery and ample hands-on opportunities to learn from artifacts from the museum’s natural history collections. It will also showcase iconic artifacts from the museum’s past, honoring its original identity and name as the Fort Worth Children’s Museum (chartered in 1941).
A major new center for the Cattle Raisers Museum, which relocated from its 7th Street location near downtown Fort Worth, will be in the new building. This center will immerse guests in the dynamic history of the cattle and ranching industry in Texas and the Southwest. The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Foundation is funding this project, and scholar B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West, is the chief curator/advisor.
A Fort Worth History gallery will present a constant stream of stories representing the region and the southwest, with changing exhibits on topics ranging from aviation to Native American history and culture.
The museum has retained one of the top exhibit design firms in the country, Bob Weis Design Island Associates, to assist the staff in developing many of the new exhibits. Over the years, Weis has worked with some of the most prestigious organizations in the country including the Smithsonian, National Geographic, Kennedy Space Center, The Walt Disney Company, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the Rockefeller Center in New York City.
What is the plan for parking at the new building? Currently the city of Fort Worth is studying the parking situation and anticipated future needs for parking. Land that is available for parking is public property, administered by the city of Fort Worth.
Why not leave the museum like it is? For the past few years, the museum and its Board of Trustees have been engaged in long-range strategic planning. We have taken a close look at our programming and the challenges of operating a growing museum inside an aging facility. In order for the museum to advance its mission and retain its stature among its guests and stakeholders, it must have a new facility. We often say that the museum has been “loved to death.” Its heart and soul remain strong, but it needs a new envelope.
The museum that opened its Montgomery Street doors in 1954 was designed to accommodate an annual visitorship of 250,000 people. Since then, that number has more than tripled. The museum has been expanded three times, but 53 years of service have taken a severe toll. Low ceiling heights also required the museum’s national collaborative partners to scale back their exhibit designs just to accommodate our space restrictions. The total gallery size is inadequate for a museum that seeks to present extraordinary learning experiences in science and history to a population the size of Fort Worth. Fort Worth deserves a world-class facility for a science and history museum. It will have one beginning in the fall of 2009.
