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Architecture center hires curator, revamps
Tuesday, February 15, 2000 By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The Heinz Architectural Center has hired Joseph Rosa, an architect and architectural historian, as its new curator.
Rosa had been chief curator of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., before joining the Heinz center yesterday.
"Joe Rosa's arrival at the museum is a welcome event and one with wide implications for the Pittsburgh region," said Carnegie Museum of Art Director Richard Armstrong. "We expect him to become central to our community's interest in, and thoughts about, architecture."
Rosa arrives on the eve of a major renovation sparked by the departure of the Heinz center's largest exhibit -- the San Francisco office of Frank Lloyd Wright, installed when the center opened in 1993.
Rosa holds a master of science degree in architecture and building design from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in architecture from Pratt Institute. He has also served as director of the Columbia Architecture Galleries, adjunct professor at Columbia University and adjunct lecturer at Catholic University and New York City Technical College. Rosa has published several books and articles on architecture and architectural photography. From 1979 to 1989, he was a practicing architect with several firms, including Peter Eisenman's and Gwathmey Seigel.
The center has been without its top curator since the departure of Dennis McFadden, who left the museum in June to become associate director of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Tracy Myers, assistant curator of The Heinz Architectural Center, has served as interim curator since McFadden's departure.
Partly because the center is short of exhibition space, Myers, Armstrong and other museum staffers have decided to place the Wright office in off-site storage for an undetermined period.
But Myers denied rumors that it will be sold.
"It will go in storage, in anticipation of a reinstallation. We don't anticipate de-accessioning it," said Myers.
The space occupied by the Wright office will become general gallery space, designed by the center's original architects -- Cicognani Kalla Architects of New York -- in the same style as the earlier galleries. With 1,350 square feet, the new gallery will increase the center's exhibition space by 40 percent.
"Having this space will allow us to organize bigger and more ambitious shows, and also allow us to borrow larger shows," Myers said. "We expect to wire the new gallery for Internet access, to take advantage of new technologies that are becoming increasingly important in architecture exhibitions."
The renovation will begin in March, and the center will be closed from Feb. 28 to Oct. 28. The project also includes extending the center's two-story elevator, which now connects the second and third floors, to the first floor. The cost, in excess of $600,000, is funded by a gift from the Drue Heinz Trust. Drue Heinz founded the center with a $10 million gift.
The office was Wright's last, located near San Francisco's Chinatown. It was a gift from the museum's Women's Committee, which purchased it from Wright collector Thomas Monaghan, founder of the Domino's pizza chain.
The acquisition of Wright's own office took some of the sting away from losing the office Wright designed for Edgar Kaufmann in Kaufmann's Downtown department store. Kaufmann's son donated that room to London's Victoria and Albert Museum, where it is now on view.
The exhibition of the Wright office at the Heinz Architectural Center -- and for visitors, the experience of it -- has been problematic because it is visible only behind glass, through a long bank of windows. While it occasionally has been opened to small, select groups, the office is inaccessible to the general public.
"It certainly has not been exhibited to its best advantage," Myers said. "Although it was a working office, it's now a museum object" and must be treated accordingly. To give the public complete access would put the office in jeopardy, Myers said. "There are no circumstances that we could present in which you could walk through it. You can't even see into the sacred space of Wright's [personal] office."
Myers said the decision to remove the Wright office from exhibition was made "by a number of people," but Rosa wasn't one of them; it was made before he was hired.
Asked why the decision was made without the new curator's input, Armstrong and Myers said there was a narrow window of opportunity to complete the work between scheduled exhibitions.
Rosa, for his part, is looking forward to having additional gallery space.
"While I think it's a very interesting room, it does prevent us from broadening the space," he said. "I'm only looking at what wonderful possibilities we have ahead for exhibits and installation pieces."
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