Displaying items by tag: refurbishment

After numerous false starts, the City of Miami Beach is now proceeding apace with the renovation of its Convention Center, which has hosted Art Basel for more than a decade despite its dated design and creaking infrastructure. The $500 million renovation, which is being planned to start when Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015 closes and is due to be completed before the 2017 edition of the fair, replaces a previous, much more ambitious redevelopment scheme designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

Art Basel will continue to take place in the center, the oldest parts of which date from the late 1950s, throughout the revamp. “We are very confident that the refurbishment will be phased in a way that will enable us to continue operating to Art Basel standards,” says a spokeswoman for the fair.

Paris’ Picasso Museum will reopen on Saturday, October 25, following a turbulent renovation and expansion. The institution closed in 2009 for what was expected to be a two-year refurbishment, but once underway, the scope of the project expanded. Five years later and $27 million over budget, the renovation is finally complete.

The Picasso Museum, which is housed in a 17th-century Baroque mansion in Paris’ historic Marais quarter, first opened to the public in 1985. The majority of its collection, which features around 5,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs, and documents, was left to the French state by the Picasso family after the artist’s death in 1973.

The Wallace Collection's Great Gallery, which contains paintings by masters including Rubens, Velazquez and Titian, has reopened after a £5m refurbishment.

Regarded as one of the finest picture galleries in the UK, the exhibition space had been closed for two years.

The central London gallery boasts some of the most famous 17th Century European paintings in the country.

As befits the man who, when he was director, undertook the £6m refurbishment and restoration of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, Tim Knox, now the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has had the museum’s 1848 portico and railings restored.

The museum was designed by George Basevi (1794-1845), a pupil of Sir John Soane, and one of the leading neo-classical architectures of his generation.

Following a two-year refurbishment, the National Gallery’s impressive gallery space, Room A, has reopened to the public. Lying beneath the main floor galleries, this permanent display offers visitors a chance to explore 218 pictures dating from the 13th to the late 19th centuries.

This newly reopened gallery offers a different way of experiencing the nation’s collection of European paintings as it is hung in broadly chronological order, telling the entire story of 400 years of painting in a single space. It aims to enhance visitors’ appreciation and understanding of some of the National Gallery’s lesser-known paintings and it provides the space and opportunity to study these works in greater detail - and in better viewing conditions - than before. With a record-breaking 6 million visitors during 2013, the National Gallery remains committed to researching and showcasing its extraordinarily rich permanent collection.

The director of the Pompidou-Metz Laurent Le Bon has been appointed president of the Musée Picasso in Paris, which is due to reopen at the end of September after a five-year refurbishment. Le Bon succeeds to Anne Baldassari, who was dismissed last month due to her much-criticized management style.