Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, an institution celebrating the artists of the region, unveils a transformative $20m expansion on 1 November. The 17,000-sq.-ft Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art and Education, a converted 19th-century mansion adjacent to the museum, now spans 14 galleries and an education studio. The project has also added expansive green space to the Woodmere campus.
Woodmere’s new addition complements the original building, known as Charles Knox Smith Hall and named after the museum’s founder—a local mining magnate and art collector. Smith bought the Woodmere estate in 1898 to house his collection, which spanned more than 2,000 works at the time of his death in 1916. In his will, Smith specified that the home and grounds become a public museum to benefit his hometown community.
As a result of several legal hurdles, the Woodmere estate was left in trust and the transition from private home to museum took decades. The Woodmere Art Museum officially opened in 1940. At the time, it featured six acres of green space and galleries displaying masterworks from Smith’s bequest, including paintings like Frederic Edwin Church’s Sunset in the Berkshire Hills (1857) and more eclectic objects like a Carrara marble bust of Abraham Lincoln (around 1868) by Sarah Fisher Ames.
The Woodmere’s new Maguire Hall Courtesy Woodmere Art Museum
“Smith lived downtown but bought the estate because he wanted a place to experience art and nature together,” William Valerio, the director and chief executive of the museum, tells The Art Newspaper. “He believed that art and nature were a path to God. We might not use those words today, but art and nature are indeed spiritual and lift the soul.”
In the decades since Smith’s death, the museum has made numerous acquisitions and received significant donations aligned with Smith’s vision to champion Philadelphia artists. The collection has grown to include more than 8,000 works by regional artists—including Pennsylvania Impressionists—and has significant holdings of prints and works on paper, with around 3,000 studies and preparatory sketches by Violet Oakley (1874-1961), the first American woman artist to receive a major public mural commission.
Although the original museum building underwent several renovations and expansions in Smith’s lifetime and in the years since, it still only had the capacity to display a small portion of the collection. In 2021, the Woodmere acquired a second building for its expansion. Completed in 1855, the structure had traded hands privately several times before it came into the possession of the Sisters of St Joseph in the 1920s, serving as a convent. By the time it came to market, the building had deteriorated substantially, leading the four sisters who still resided there to relinquish the estate.
Impressionism gallery in Maguire Hall Courtesy Woodmere Art Museum
The acquisition of the building was realised with a gift from the Maguire Foundation in honour of the late Frances M. Maguire, an artist and philanthropist who served on Woodmere’s board. The museum worked to revitalise the structure but keep true to its original space, contracting Matthew Baird Architects, Krieger and Associates Architects and the landscape architecture firm Andropogon Associates to oversee the project.
The two buildings are now connected via a public sidewalk and four acres of additional green space featuring sculptures like Robinson Fredenthal’s monumental works White Water and On the Rocks (both 1978). The five largest galleries in the new building are devoted to living artists, featuring works by Doug Bucci, Didier William, Barbara Bullock, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Peter Paone and others.
“The Woodmere collection is one of the great collections of American art, and to be able to show the collection is a gamechanger,” Valerio says. “Unless you’re a curator or historian of American art, you may not know what’s here, because we haven’t had space to show it. That is what should be driving attendance in the future: people will know our collection and know that it’s something to come see and experience.”
Contemporary gallery in Maguire Hall Courtesy Woodmere Art Museum
Woodmere receives around 50,000 visitors per year and hopes to double that figure with the completion of its new space. The museum’s opening programmes include jazz performances and blessings of the grounds—by the sisters who lived in the former covenant as well as Lenape tribal members.
In addition to the expansion, earlier this year Woodmere received a $750,00 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (which the Donald Trump administration withdrew but later reinstated after the museum filed a lawsuit). The grant will be used to digitise the collection, and for conservation work and catalogue updates.
