Wesleyan University Pruzan Arts Center
In Spring 2019, PRO won an invited competition to design a new art gallery building for the Wesleyan University Davison Arts Center—one of the most extensive collections of works on paper in North America.
The project repositions the university’s works on paper collection from a siloed Arts Campus designed by Roche and Dinkeloo to sit between two McKim, Mead, & White structures at the heart of campus, forming a bridge between them and creating a modern entry point into the main university library.The new gallery presents an opportunity to literally mix the visual arts into the central campus, to extend a sense of interdisciplinary fellowship between departments, and to provide a clearly defined place with a distinct identity for this very important university resource.
It will be a connective building — a social condenser — one that ties multiple groups of people to one another and to the visual arts. In a relatively small area, the new gallery building accommodates several complex and sometimes contradictory functions. On the one hand, the new building will be open, porous, and connective, linking adjacent buildings and creating new campus connections. On the other hand, the gallery itself must be a highly controlled environment, devoid of sunlight, and protective of the delicate works on paper. Our design carefully overlaps these seemingly opposing characteristics in the service of both the connective and protective nature of the program.
In Spring 2019, PRO won an invited competition to design a new art gallery building for the Wesleyan University Davison Arts Center—one of the most extensive collections of works on paper in North America.
It will be a connective building — a social condenser — one that ties multiple groups of people to one another and to the visual arts. In a relatively small area, the new gallery building accommodates several complex and sometimes contradictory functions. On the one hand, the new building will be open, porous, and connective, linking adjacent buildings and creating new campus connections. On the other hand, the gallery itself must be a highly controlled environment, devoid of sunlight, and protective of the delicate works on paper. Our design carefully overlaps these seemingly opposing characteristics in the service of both the connective and protective nature of the program.
.webp)
In the interior, the building connects and opens up into the historic structures on campus, embracing the tactile experience of the existing brick adjacencies
In the interior, the building connects and opens up into the historic structures on campus, embracing the tactile experience of the existing brick adjacencies
Miriam Peterson
Nathan Rich
Alex Bodkin
Ben Hochberg
Bryson Wood
Charles Beckendorf
Sarah Kasper
Martin Carrillo Bueno
Sixuan Chen
