Just over a month ago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland faced a tough deadline. Eager to expand, it had raised $22.8 million for a $32 million building project. In late September, the Cleveland Foundation added $500,000 to that.
But the museum, a kunsthalle led since 1996 by Jill Snyder, had to get that total to $26.3 million by Oct. 29 if it wanted to qualify for federal and State of Ohio tax credits. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that would have added another $4.5 million to the campaign, specifically for MOCA’s endowment.
On Monday, the newspaper said the museum was expected to get those tax credits, and on Tuesday, the museum’s board gave the official green light to the project. Groundbreaking is expected to take place next month, with the opening expected in about two years.
The museum’s new home is the first major building in the U.S. to be designed by Foreign Office Architects in London, according to the MOCA Cleveland’s website. It’s a four-story, 34,000-sq.ft. structure, made of glass and black stainless steel. It will have flexible gallery spaces. And:
The lobby is designed as an urban living room, a place for visitors to mingle, eat, shop, attend events, over the course of hours, or for brief interludes in a busy day. There will be no admission charge to the first floor space. It is a place to engage at no cost before proceeding on to view our exhibitions for a modest fee.
That sounds like a good idea to me, though it has its downsides — as Starbucks recently learned, when it made its shops less user-friendly, sometimes people simply occupy space for hours.
According to Tuesday’s Plain Dealer,
The new MOCA is expected to attract 65,000 visitors a year, a big leap from the 18,000 to 20,000 is now attracts in its rented space on the second level of the Cleveland Play House complex at 8501 Carnegie Ave., which it has occupied since 1990.