More space sorely needed for Elvehjem

In a dark back room in the nether regions of the Elvehjem Museum of Art, a painting waits patiently for its chance to be seen by the public.

The work has spent many a long year lovingly crated. There simply isn’t any more room in the seven Elvehjem galleries dedicated to the permanent collection. Nor is the painting alone in its obscurity; Elvehjem director Russell Panczenko says approximately 95 percent of the permanent collection is in exile right now.

Workers unload pieces from a traveling exhibition behind the Elvehjem Museum of Art. The museum lacks a loading dock and adequate storage space, making the safe handling and storage of art more challenging. Photo: Jeff Miller

“Given the limited amount of exhibition space, we select works for long-term display that are historically and aesthetically significant, visually engaging and pedagogically charged,” he says.

The Elvehjem’s collection has grown from 1,600 when the facility opened in 1970 to about 16,000 pieces today. Potential donors have approached Panczenko about their collections, but are concerned about the museum’s ability to use their prized works of art effectively.

“No one gives art to be stored. People want it to be admired and valued as they themselves have admired and valued it,” says Maria Saffiotti-Dale, the Elvehjem’s new curator of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts.

Ideally, 40,000 more square feet added to the current 35,000 would do the trick, Panczenko told the Campus Planning Committee last fall. That increase would include:

• A loading dock. There currently is none, and Panczenko says he has had to turn away a number of traveling exhibitions because safe handling could not be guaranteed.
• More storage space for art. Appropriate climate controls, critical in the management of fine art, would need to be included.
• Additional gallery space.
• Object study rooms, which would provide specialized classes for direct confrontation with works of art.
• A reference center for exploring texts, video and databanks related to exhibitions.

About 2.7 million people have visited the Elvehjem since it opened in 1970 as the UW–Madison venue for the history of visual arts. Over the years, a growing number of guests have been K-12 students. “In a relatively short period of time, the Elvehjem has been transformed into a major educational outreach facility for the university,” Panczenko says, adding that sometimes the teaching must take place in makeshift classrooms using antiquated equipment.

The Elvehjem also has become an important venue for traveling exhibitions such as “Beads, Body and Soul: Art and Light in the Yorùbá Universe,” which opens Saturday, Jan. 29. (See page 5). The semester-long exhibition, the first to focus on past and present beadwork traditions of Yorùbá-speaking peoples in West Africa and the Americas, consists of more than 150 beaded pieces ranging from a king’s throne to a fly whisk. According to Jeri Richmond, the Elvehjem staff member who oversees loading and unloading, the shipment, traveling from the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of California-Los Angeles, required special handling, which had to be conducted in the galleries because of the delicate materials from which the objects had been made. Space also will have to be found for the many large crates used to ship the exhibition to Madison.

In addition to this historic exhibition, the new year also is bringing a special team to the Elvehjem to conduct an architectural and engineering study. The experts will develop a detailed program for the expansion and explore where it might be located.

For more information about the proposed expansion, contact Panczenko, 263-2842.