Notre Dame’s Raclin Murphy Museum of Art plans for opening weekend
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The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, which opens this weekend at the University of Notre Dame, seeks to put its audience first. The free museum is open to all and incorporates references to the surrounding South Bend community throughout.
The museum sits just west of the university’s Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park, which features more than 20 works across nine acres. Its location on the southern edge of campus across from Eddy Street Commons and near the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the Walsh Family Hall of Architecture and the O’Neill Hall of Music forms what its director calls a welcoming arts gateway.
“It gives us an opportunity to welcome people in a way we haven’t been able to in a long, long time,” Director Joseph Becherer said. “We want everyone to come and to come often.”
Director Joseph Becherer shares what visitors can expect to see at the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.
The $66 million museum opens this weekend with three days of public events beginning at 6 p.m. Friday and extending through Sunday afternoon.
Patrons will be invited to art demonstrations, performances and tours of the new, 70,000-square-foot building which features 23 permanent collection galleries, two rotating exhibition areas, a cafe, a chapel, and other community learning spaces.
The four-story building is designed by New York-based architecture firm Robert A.M. Stern and Associates, and is anchored by a large atrium connecting the museum’s three upper floors. A Teaching Gallery and Learning Commons will be available to K-12 visitors on school trips, and the museum’s Mary, Queen of Families Chapel features stained-glass artistry by Mimmo Paladino, including mosaic ceiling tiles depicting iconography important to the university, South Bend and the local Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.
Museum leaders say it’s all a part of an effort to reflect the local community. The museum’s new Indigenous Art of the Americas Gallery was curated in consultation with the Pokagon Band, a museum spokeswoman said, to ensure art on display respects indigenous culture. A piece commissioned to sculptor Maya Lin, who created the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., is called Silver Saint Joseph Watershed and uses recycled silver to represent the St. Joseph River.
“It really gives us an opportunity to celebrate the St. Joe, the significance of the environment, the importance of water,” Becherer said of the piece. “But, it also gives us an opportunity to celebrate those cultures, those people that have long called this place home.”
Becherer talks about local influences in the work on display at the Raclin Murphy museum.
Silver Saint Joseph Watershed is one of eight works commissioned specifically for the new museum – something Becherer said came as a response to students’ requests for more modern and contemporary art. Those pieces – like Paladino’s mosaics and artist Kiki Smith’s terrazzo Sea of Stars installation – cover the museum literally from ceiling to floor.
The museum showcases 1,000 works of art, or 3% of the university’s total collection. For those who had frequented the university’s former Snite Museum of Art, the Raclin Museum will bring an entirely different experience, museum leaders said. Artworks have been pulled from storage and restored for display. Altogether, the pieces cover 4,000 years of history with mediums mixed with one another through the museum.
“We have blended the collection together,” Becherer said. “It’s not just a room full of paintings, or a room full of sculptures, but you can see the paintings and sculptures and decorative art and, where applicable, works on paper really come together. It’s a really integrated approach to the collection.”
The former Snite museum, located just northwest of Notre Dame Stadium, now becomes the Snite Research Center in the Visual Arts and will support museum storage, curation and administrative offices.
While a second phase to the Raclin Murphy museum project has been teased in university materials, Becherer said his attention has been focused on opening the first phase. The second phase of the project could bring an additional 62,000-square-feet of space with additional galleries, teaching space, administrative offices, storage and more. As of a November news release, a timeline has not been set for this project.
Philanthropist Ernestine Raclin, who died this summer at age 95, along with her daughter and son-in-law Carmen and Chris Murphy, are the lead benefactors of the new museum.
Becherer said he couldn’t think of anyone who could bring forward the museum project with the same meaning, sincerity and history as the Raclin Murphy family.
“I chuckle to myself every once in a while because the great domed ceiling of the atrium is glass and I just can’t help but to think that Ernie in particular is watching from above,” Becherer said. “I hope she’s smiling.”
The first of the museum’s temporary exhibitions is called Equal Forces: The Sculpture and Photography of Kenneth Snelson and will be open from March 19 to July 7. The next is Through the Lens of Father Browne, S.J.: Photographic Adventure of an Irish Priest and will be on display from Aug. 27 to Dec. 1.
More information about the Raclin Murphy museum’s opening weekend is available online at raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu/visit/opening-weekend.