Hasta La Ideas

Foster + Partners inserted “a crystal spine” into the MFA’s two main volumes to create the four-floor Art of the Americas Wing, which opened to the public on Saturday.

On Saturday, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston cut the ribbon on its new Art of the Americas wing, an 133,491-square-foot addition that includes 53 (yes, 53!) new galleries, more than 500 newly acquired artworks, and one cavernous, light-filled courtyard. The $345 million expansion, shepherded to a triumphant climax by MFA director Malcolm Rogers, required nothing short of an architectural reimagining of the 140-year-old museum. Enter Foster + Partners, which the MFA selected to take on the project back in 1999 based on the firm’s “unparalleled reputation for space planning and its deep understanding of how to best present the Museum’s great works of art,” according to Rogers. The plan was to restore the logic of the 1909 Beaux Arts building, devised by architect Guy Lowell, while adding a “crystal spine”—the freestanding glazed structure that is the new wing. “We really try to be really respectful,” Michael Jones, a partner at Foster + Partners, told The Boston Globe. “I’m not saying that we don’t do something that’s quite powerful in and of itself and is a very purposeful building of its time, but it’s respectful of the existing building that it’s adding to. After all, you know, they’ve got to sit together for….Ever.”

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