Only on MAN: National Gallery of Art trying to expand

MANscoop: The National Gallery of Art wants to expand. MAN has learned that the NGA has engaged in talks to acquire the Federal Trade Commission building, which is located directly across Constitution Avenue from the NGA's John Russell Pope-designed West Building. (In the Google Satellite image above, the FTC building is in the upper-left, the Pope building is across from it, and the East Building is at right.) Best-known as the 'Apex Building,' the FTC headquarters was designed by Chicago-based architect Edward H. Bennett, who oversaw the entire Federal Triangle project. The six-story Apex Building opened in 1938, three years before the NGA's Pope building.

Multiple sources tell MAN that the deal is not yet complete and it is possible that the transfer of the building from the federal government to the NGA may eventually fall through. However, each of the sources with whom I spoke were confident that the NGA would complete the transaction. Internal NGA planning has estimated that the museum could open galleries in the building as soon as 2012.

A separate source pointed MAN to HR 31, a bill that Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.) introduced in 2005, when Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. The bill calls for the FTC to "vacate" its building and for it to be made "available" to the National Gallery of Art. Congress took no action on the bill, and it has not been re-introduced in the current Congress.

A National Gallery spokesperson said that the NGA had no comment.

An NGA expansion is long overdue. The National Gallery is one of the few major American museums to miss out on the expansion boom of the last dozen years. (The NGA last opened substantial new spaces in 1978, when the IM Pei-designed East Building opened.) Partially as a result of a lack of appropriate space, the NGA lags behind its peer institutions -- both in the US and abroad -- in showing contemporary art. Compared to other major museums, the NGA shows little art of the last 100 years. Its photography department, which acquired its own galleries several years ago has been hampered by galleries too small to accommodate contemporary photography. A number of NGA collections, including 19th and 20th-century central European art, are rarely on view for lack of space.

The Federal Trade Commission headquarters was the last building to be constructed in the Federal Triangle, the enormous Depression-era building project that sits roughly between the White House and the Capitol. The Apex Building, which looks like a dull, under-adorned Beaux Arts box from one end, is likely best-known for its rounded Ionic colonnade, which points toward the Capitol. As with other Federal Triangle buildings, the Apex Building is clad in limestone and sits on a granite base. The 'point' of the Federal Triangle is completed by the Mellon Fountain.

According to the FTC's history of the building, in 1987 the Apex Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a component of the Pennsylvania Avenue Historic District. (This is the view from the FTC roof across the street to the NGA's buildings and to the Capitol beyond.) A Historic Structure Report from that same year determined that the Apex Building "has an integrity of historical occupation, having been designed [for] and continuously occupied [by] that agency. Further, the few and relatively minor physical changes that have occurred since its completion in 1938 have left the architect's historic design intent largely intact. On the whole, the building enjoys a level of integrity seldom matched in Federal buildings."

While Bennett stripped his building of many of its planned architectural details because of federal budget problems caused by the Depression, it has extensive exterior art. The best-known work is Michael Lantz's sculptures Man Controlling Trade. (While the sculptures are Washington faves, Michael Lantz is less well-known than his brother Walter, who created Woody Woodpecker.) The building also features work decorative panels by Carl Schmitz, Chaim Gross, Robert Laurent, and Concetta Scaravaglione.

The NGA expansion would further concentrate Washington museumdom around the National Mall. The Newseum, located across Pennsylvania Ave. from the NGA's West Building, is under construction and is due to open in 2008.