After greater than three a long time in downtown San Diego, the Museum of Up to date Artwork San Diego (MCASD) at 1001 Kettner Boulevard has handed over its lease to the brand new Navy Seal Museum. The smaller of MCASD’s two downtown buildings will function the long run web site for the army museum, whereas plans for the bigger area—the historic former baggage-claim processing facility for the Santa Fe Depot at 1100 Kettner Boulevard, which is owned by MCASD—stay unknown. MCASD’s principal constructing in La Jolla, about 13 miles north of downtown, is now the museum’s solely location.
“The design is full,” Todd Perry, the Navy Seal Museum’s director, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Now we are able to begin, as they are saying, to get in there and begin swinging hammers.”
The Navy Seal Museum will use the area as each a historic survey of the army department and for recruitment, because the constructing is close to Naval Base Coronado—a coaching facility in a area the place greater than 600,000 energetic and retired personnel reside. “The artwork of serving and the inspiration to serve is one thing we’re very pleased with,” Perry says. “This is not a battle museum, it is a museum of great sacrifice and repair.” The Navy Seal Museum is scheduled to open in late December.
After a number of years of internet hosting small storefront gallery areas downtown, MCASD Downtown formally opened in 1993 on the One America Plaza constructing (1001 Kettner Boulevard), designed by the architect Helmut Jahn with interiors designed by the artists Robert Irwin and Richard Fleischner and the architect David Raphael Singer. MCASD Downtown’s bigger constructing at 1100 Kettner Boulevard opened in 2007.
The completion of a intestine renovation of MCASD’s La Jolla location—mixed with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, dwindling attendance numbers and an general change of panorama within the downtown San Diego harbour space—led to MCASD’s resolution to switch its lease on 1001 Kettner Boulevard to the Navy Seal Museum. (The constructing is owned by the Irvine Firm, a real-estate large that holds many notable properties throughout the nation, together with the MetLife Constructing in New York.)
In the meantime, the destiny of MCASD Downtown’s Jacobs Constructing and Copley Constructing at 1100 Kettner Boulevard (above) stays unknown Picture: Courtesy the Museum of Up to date Artwork San Diego
MCASD’s La Jolla constructing was totally remodeled when it reopened in 2022 after a $105m renovation by the architect Annabelle Selldorf, its exhibition area quadrupled. “We’re investing in our infrastructure, as we’re a gathering establishment,” says Kathryn Kanjo, the director of MCASD. This all marks a turning level within the museum’s greater than 80-year historical past.
For years at 1001 Kettner Boulevard—the long run web site of the Navy Seal Museum—the triangular sliver of a constructing housed MCASD’s instructional division together with off-site installations that have been smaller however cosier and sometimes featured pupil work and public-facing programming, like workshops and household occasions.
Throughout the road at 1100 Kettner Boulevard—the bigger construction with an as but unsure future—what made the constructing architecturally fascinating additionally made it difficult. With out a correct loading dock, parking amenities or climate-controlled storage, it maintained an exigent profile for each museum employees and guests. The constructing functioned as an city satellite tv for pc for the principle La Jolla location, which doesn’t have a possible public-transportation possibility for art-lovers with out vehicles.
Nowadays, some MCASD workers are capable of earn a living from home or off-site not less than a part of the time, and plenty of instructional partnerships happen outdoors of downtown, diminishing the necessity for protecting the lease on 1001 Kettner Boulevard.
However programming with theatre and efficiency teams, like Blindspot Collective and La Jolla Playhouse, has made use of the MCASD-owned 1100 Kettner Boulevard constructing since 2022. Notable previous exhibitions on the previous practice depot embody Viva la Revolucion, which occupied downtown with graffiti interventions in 2010; Liza Lou’s Shade Area, hundreds of vibrant glass beads made in collaboration with museum employees and neighborhood members; Ten Thousand Waves, an immersive movie by Isaac Julien that stuffed the cavernous area; a blockbuster Tara Donovan present in 2009 and a formidable Do Ho Suh set up in 2016. The ultimate exhibition at MCASD Downtown, Carmen Argote: Filtration System for a Course of-based Observe, closed out the placement’s run on 23 October 2022. As for the way forward for the constructing, the museum’s official stance is a cryptic one: “The destiny of 1100 is unknown or not but introduced.”
