Boston | 2019
An art non-profit sought to address the reality that a majority of art priced between $2,000 and $200,000 remains unsold and shuttered away in storage due to gallery pricing practices. Entire bodies of work are bought by galleries and priced highly in order to establish high reference values. Once a single piece is sold, the overall value of the collection skyrockets. Yet, high reference values mean the majority of works remain unsold -- and thus live in storage, unavailable to both public and private. The non-profit facilitates direct artist control over pricing, and takes a dramatically reduced percentage of sales.
In response, the architectural brief required a space that could facilitate as wide a spectrum of art and events as possible without incurring high costs between events -- functioning variably as art gallery, children’s classroom, event center, performance art venue, movie theater, and lecture hall, while not exceeding a budget of $100,000. This challenge required rapid transformations in layout, quality of light, and ceiling height. Rather than produce expensive floor-standing systems, the design borrows from the language of scrims in set design — inserting a grid of translucent partitions that descend from above to change ceiling height, modulate light, define light boxes, or repartition space. With this system, the gallery is able to achieve and finely control qualities of light to a degree normally only possible in larger museums with complex skylight and light baffle systems.
Pre-programmed scenarios in lighting and partitions allow for rapid spatial transformations, making the space completely malleable — and completely adaptable to its various needs.
Contractor: Austin Roberts Construction