Five architectural firms have been chosen as semi-finalists to design the new Clyfford Still Museum near Civic Center, museum officials announced today.
The 30,000-square-foot facility on Bannock Street just west of the new Denver Art Museum addition is expected to be completed in 2009. It will house galleries to display the work of the abstract expressionist as well as educational spaces, storage and a conservation laboratory.
The firms selected include Allied Works Architecture of Portland, David Chipperfield of London), Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York City, Ohlhausen DuBois Architects (also of New York City), and SANAA of Tokyo.
Construction costs of the privately funded Still museum will depend on the architect eventually selected, but museum officials originally estimated a price tag at $7 million to $10 million, plus a $10 million operations endowment.
In 2004, the artist’s widow, Patricia A. Still, agreed to give the city more than 2,100 paintings and works on paper from Still’s estate on the condition that the city build a museum. In October 2005, two months after Patricia Still’s death, the city announced the museum would also receive the artist’s archives and 400 more of his works from her estate.
Still – along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – was a pivotal figure in the development of abstract expressionism in the 1940s and 1950s.
