The Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary holds one of the nation’s oldest collections of art at an institution of higher education. In addition to a permanent collection featuring works by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe, the Muscarelle hosts traveling exhibits of great renown and offers academic programs designed to foster art history and research.
The original museum’s size limited the Muscarelle’s ability to present certain programs and display more of its collection. In 2023, the college embarked upon a renovation project to expand the museum’s footprint. The challenge: Design an addition to an established building on a centuries-old campus that aligns with the school’s Georgian and Colonial Revival architecture. The solution: the addition of ALPOLIC MCM among the project’s other materials helps maintain cohesion with the existing museum’s design while allowing for contemporary touches.
Architect Carlton Abbott designed the original Muscarelle, which opened to the public in 1983. For the expansion project, architectural firm Pelli Clark and Partners tripled the size of the venue, adding 42,000 square feet of exhibition space to the existing 17,500 square foot building. Known as the Martha Wren Briggs Center for the Visual Arts, the expansion gives the museum a new lobby, art storage and classroom space, plus more gallery space for high-profile exhibitions.
The prominent use of brick on the three-story envelope complements the existing Abbott section of the Muscarelle. Inclusion of metal composite materials nod toward the museum’s forward movement into new technologies in interactive art study. ALPOLIC MCM in Charcoal finish features on the exterior pleats surrounding the new building, plus on the side window box and in thick louvers on the lance windows at the front and back entrances.
Groundbreaking for the Briggs Center took place in November, 2022, and the Muscarelle closed months later to accommodate construction. The expanded museum re-opened in February, 2025, to host a rare exhibition of drawings by Michaelangelo.
