 STIEREN CENTER FOR
EXHIBITIONS TO OPEN
McNay Art Museum will expand space for
touring shows and permanent collection
By MELISSA BAIRD
Photography Courtesy of THE MCNAY ART MUSEUM
From its beginnings as a lovely 1920s
home in Alamo Heights, the McNay Art
Museum has offered San Antonians a
unique environment to enjoy one of the
Southwest’s finest collections of modern
masterpieces.
Now, the McNay is taking a bold step
forward with its largest-ever expansion —
one that turns the museum itself into just
such a modern masterpiece.
The Jane and Arthur Stieren Center for
Exhibitions, which will celebrate its grand
opening June 7 and 8, is a 45,000-squarefoot
facility that nearly doubles the
amount of exhibition space at the McNay.
This will allow Texas’ first modern art museum
to host larger,critically acclaimed touring
exhibitions and to feature more of the
works in its outstanding permanent collection.
As well, the Stieren Center is one of the
state’s most significant works of contemporary
architecture — only the second
American commission for modern French
master Jean-Paul Viguier.
 Viguier, an accomplished modernist
whose works include Paris’ landmark Parc
Andre-Citroën, impressed the McNay’s
architecture search committee with his
design’s sensitivity to the rolling, 23-acre
McNay site and creative use of the landscape’s
contours to support a low-profile
yet elegant structure. The committee
sought “a highly flexible exhibition space
with the presence of natural light and a
building that would not overwhelm the
original museum home,” said McNay
director Dr.William J.Chiego.“Jean-Paul’s
design was unanimously accepted as
one that would meet our goals for space
while preserving the intimate and unique
setting of the McNay.”
Viguier’s previous U.S. work, the Accor
Sofitel Chicago Water Tower Hotel,
opened in 2003 and was soon named “Best New Building in Chicago”— a high
honor, given the city’s rich architectural
traditions — and one of the American
Institute of Architects’ “150 Favorite
Buildings in North America.”
His work is noted for his skillful integration
of engineering, landscape design
and architecture into concepts and
structures that are subtle and functional,
yet beautiful and inspiring. “[French
philosopher] Paul Valéry wrote that the
soul needs beauty; the body needs what
is useful or comfortable; and society
needs what is durable,” Viguier says. “For
me, those are the three aspects of architecture,
and they cannot be separated.”
The hallmarks of Viguier’s style are evident
at the Stieren Center,which is clearly
contemporary—in contrast to the Spanish
Colonial Revival character of the original
McNay—and carefully integrated into the
landscape.The upper floor of the two-story
addition, located east of the current structure, is level with the ground floor of the
originalMcNay. Its lower level engages with
new gardens and continues the dialogue
between indoors and outdoors that has
long given the museum its unique character
as a beautiful place for viewing art.
 The McNay’s landscape and natural
light are admitted and embraced not just
through the Stieren Center’s extensive
wall glazing, but through an innovative
multi-level roof designed by Viguier that
blocks direct sunlight — which could
damage the artwork — but nonetheless
allows for daylighting of the new galleries.
The subtle effect of the Stieren Center as
a complement, rather than a competitor, to
the originalMcNay is extended through the
use of warm, soft palettes and materials —
grey-green stone and bronze-toned metals
on the exterior,dark hardwoods in the interiors.
On the outside, the center features
beautiful outdoor sculpture gardens, outlined
by walls that extend the architecture
into the landscape and create intimate
and engaging vistas on the installed works.
The heart of the Stieren Center is the
new Tobin Exhibition Galleries, an unstructured 7,500-square-foot space that provides
a home in San Antonio for traveling exhibitions
that currently cannot be accommodated
in theAlamoCity.The center includes
new reception galleries, spaces designed
for works on paper, the decorative arts and
indoor sculpture galleries to complement
the new gardens. The Stieren Center also
features a new museum store, a 226-seat
lecture hall and state-of-the-art learning
centers equipped with the latest digital
technology resources to support the
McNay’s extensive educational programs.
All told, the Stieren Center will greatly
enhance the McNay’s ability to fulfill its
mission — established by Marion Koogler
McNay herself with the museum’s founding
in 1954 — to bring modern art to the
people of San Antonio and South Texas.
Currently, the McNay receives more than
100,000 visitors annually, and its educational
programs and offerings reach more
than 40,000 San Antonians, including
20,000 area students. Its collection
includes nearly 18,000 objects, although,
as in many museums, only a fraction of
those can be displayed at any one time.
“The new addition will allow us to present
much more of our own superb permanent
collection year round,and to host
nationally renowned exhibitions that currently
travel to Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston
or outside Texas.” says Tom Frost, chairman
of the McNay board of trustees.
 Frost has also chaired the McNay’s
capital campaign to support construction
of the Stieren Center, with a goal of $50.9
million that represents the largest effort to
date for any San Antonio arts organization.
So far, the campaign is well on track to
meet its goal, having already passed the
$46 million mark. The lead gift of more than
$8 million was made from the estate of lifelong
San Antonian and noted arts supporter
Arthur Stieren, an active patron and
contributor to the McNay since the 1980s.
Stieren’s widow, Jane, now Jane Stieren
Lacy, is herself a former leader of the
McNay trustees; she chaired the architectural
search and building committee and
hasmade an additional $3.25million gift to
support the new lecture hall.“The Stierens’
contributions are truly extraordinary,” says
Chiego.“The benefits to our members and
visitors will be great and will serve as a lasting
tribute to their wise and intelligent
patronage and generous spirit.”
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