By Eric Baxter
Editor

The south entrance of the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester is graced with two-story tall mosaics portraying classic figures. The men and women look out across a broad swath of lawn and ornamental trees bisected by an empty reflecting pool once fed by a lion’s head fountain. Aside from sidewalk foot traffic along Orange Street, the figures have not gazed on visitors since the 1980s, when the entrance was shifted to the north side of the building for better handicapped access.

Hector Lacandazon, of Michigan, spends time the Currier’s European Art gallery. Visitation at the museum went from more than 30,000 in 2004 to more than 60,000 in 2005.

But the artistic giants’ decades long vigil over the largely unused south lawn may be coming to a close. The Currier is beginning a longawaited expansion and has passed through the first of the city’s hurdles in the planning process. Soon, maybe within a few short years, though no exact time frame has been determined, the figures could be gazing out across a winter garden bracketed by two new wings, home to more galleries and more space for the public.

Yet the physical expansion of the museum is just the visible portion of the museum’s plans for the future.

“We are looking at how the building can support programming, the programs are first and foremost in the planning,” said Currier director Susan Strickler.

Programming can range from open galleries, to school tours, to adult gallery drawing classes to community functions within the limited spaces the museum has not dedicated to their collections.

Strickler said current measurements put the Currier at about 55,000 square feet, a small size in comparison to other museums with similar internationally known collections. The expansion would add more than 30,000 square feet to the total.

“The plans include two dedicated spaces for classrooms for school kids, a new winter garden, a café for visitors to use during day or as a very distinctive setting for informal programs. The café will also seat 150 for dinner, or 500 for cocktails, the museum’s 1929 courtyard is beautiful but it’s not large enough for many functions,’ she said.

The new layout also includes an auditorium to present musical programs and lectures. The north entrance will be reconfigured and pushed out; absorbing what is now Myrtle Way and provide a larger entrance area for visitors to meet and a new space for the museum’s shop. Outside of the north doors will be a new arrival plaza and expanded parking.

While the physical buildout of the museum will be the most visible part of the expansion, the purpose behind the build out is the true focus of the museum and that purpose has roots that date back to when the museum opened its doors in 1929.

“We have been working over the last few years to become a resource for the state, and the expanded building will help us offer programs to serve a wider constituency, and also help us focus on Manchester as a place of cultural activity and build on the successes of everything from the airport to other recreational venues like Riverwalk, the Fisher Cats stadium and the Verizon, as well as the significant work that has taken place on revitalization of historic buildings,” she said.

The idea of an art gallery in Manchester, gallery was then an interchangeable term with museum, was first put forward by Moody Currier, a city art lover, though not a collector. He wanted to see a museum within the city that could rival some of the museums in larger cities across the country. But more than a place to showcase fine art, he wanted to create an institution for the “betterment and advancement of humanity.” When the Currier was finished in 1929, it was one of a only a few museums in the country that actively sought out the community to use and visit and education was a fundamental element of what the museum had to offer.

Today, education is still a critical component and what Strickler said was driving the large part of the expansion.

“The over riding idea is to make the Currier a statewide and more visible cultural resource. Our fastest growing audience is school children. Most come on tours, and currently we’re not able to accommodate some of the larger school groups. The expansion will help us accomplish that goal. More recently we launched four curricula on line that will enable teachers to use images from the Currier’s collection in classroom lessons, and the curricula range across the education spectrum from the arts to language arts. With our increasingly stronger connections to the community, we know the demand to use the museum will continue to grow,” said Strickler.

Two years ago, when plans for expansion were being fleshed out, the Currier saw more than 35,000 visitors. Last year that number jumped to more than 63,000. The museum estimates it is able to show about 7 percent of its total collection and Strickler said the collections were the basis for all programs and more space meant more of the collection on display. She said the additional space would also allow the museum to play host to more traveling exhibits, similar to “In The American Grain: Dove, Hartley, Marin, O’Keefe, and Steiglitz,” which takes a new perspective on the artists by viewing them through their friendship with collector and arts champion Duncan Phillips.

While the expansion, under the direction of architect Ann Beha, promises a larger Currier and better fulfillment of its mission, Strickler said the museum intends to retain much of the charm that first drew art connoisseurs from Boston in 1929.

“We need to raise funds for the building and reach out for community support. But one of the things we are concerned about is maintaining the sense of character, the sense intimacy and scale of the Currier as it is now.

“It’s a wonderful place,” she said.