From the Director: 2006 Archives

Honoring a Home for Art

This article first appeared in the May–June 2006 issue of Insight, published by the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

In a few weeks we will mark an important moment in the history of the University of Michigan Museum of Art—the temporary closure of Alumni Memorial Hall (AMH) to the public as of 5 pm on June 25 for our long-awaited project of expansion, restoration, and refurbishment. Although I am confident that a more thorough exploration of the history of AMH will be forthcoming in relation to our anticipated return to public service in fall 2008, I’d like to offer a few insights here into the history of this lovely building and its special contributions to the life of our University.

Alumni Memorial Hall began as a concept envisioned by University faculty, staff, students, and alumni after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) to honor the more than 1,500 University men who had served in that conflict. Early efforts raised $10,000 in 1865 toward the erection of a memorial building, but the project then languished until 1903, by which time University men had also served in the Spanish-American War (1898). A new committee was formed and presented a plan to the University’s Regents in October 1903 for a “useful structure” that would serve as a gathering place for students and faculty while also remembering the sacrifices of University men in three conflicts—the Mexican War of 1847 was added to the list of those conflicts to be memorialized. More than 1,500 alumni contributed funds, although the largest gift—$10,000—came from Ezra Rust of New York, who was not a graduate but who recognized the University’s important role in national leadership. By early 1905 enough funding had been identified to engage the services of an architectural firm, Donaldson and Meier of Detroit, led by principal design architect John Donaldson.

Over the course of design work in 1905 and 1906, the intended use of AMH evolved to include long-desired space for display of the University’s art collections, which had been growing since their first establishment in 1855. This purpose—wrongly held by many over the years not to have been part of the intent for the building—was to take its place in addition to intended functions as a war memorial, gathering space, and first home to the University’s Alumni Association. The plan for displaying art was thought by the planning committee to be entirely compatible with the memorial function of the interior spaces—a convergence that has created one of the most enduring charms of the building. The gallery spaces were to consist of what we call the Apse, as a statuary hall, as well as two paintings galleries toward the rear of each of the first and second floors.

The site chosen for AMH had been occupied since the 1880s by tennis courts—courts that had been so costly that their siting led to the erection of Tappan Hall at an unusual distance from State Street, then the western edge of the central campus. Construction began in September 1907, although the formal laying of the cornerstone was delayed until June 17, 1908. Construction took more than two years, and the final cost was some $195,885 (or a princely $7.06 per square foot!)—about two-thirds of which came from individual gifts. Opening events held in 1910 featured the exhibition of a major collection of American and “Oriental” art on loan from Detroit industrialist Charles Lang Freer, now the core of the collections of the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. University president James Angell characterized AMH at its dedication as “this most beautiful of structures in the state” and a suitable tribute to those “brave fellows” who had sacrificed to hold the Union together.

The Museum of Art as we know it only came into existence in July 1946, although another twenty years passed before the Museum became the sole tenant of AMH. Substantial renovations were undertaken in 1958 and again in 1967 to improve AMH’s abilities to protect and display art. While improving the building’s functionality, each renovation brought aesthetic losses: the 1967 renovation notably (and sadly) resulted in the removal of the original skylights which had illuminated all of the major second-floor rooms (victim to the inadequate skylight technologies of the time); the filling in of first-floor windows with precast stone; the removal of marble fireplaces that had adorned the first-floor galleries; and the obscuring of many of the building’s cove ceilings and architectural moldings under “modern” drop ceilings to allow for new climate control systems.

Our current project of expansion and restoration aims to reclaim many of these original but long-lost features, while offering a number of wonderful historical convergences. If our timetable stands, we hope to reopen—with a museum facility at last worthy of this great University—in late 2008, the centenary of the laying of the AMH cornerstone in July 1908. The site on which our new addition, the Frankel Wing, is to be built was home until 1958 to what was originally the Natural History Museum, converted later in its history to a classroom building housing Romance languages. With the passage of another 50 years, the concepts of memory, art, and gathering will be reunited in a facility that has been a home to great art at the University for a century. We are confident it will have proven worth the wait, a fitting tribute to our much loved, and long suffering, old friend, Alumni Memorial Hall.

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