Joel Sanders Architect

The relocation of the Wigmore Gallery to a new space on West 57^th street involved coming up with an environment suited to the display of the gallery’s unique inventory of museum quality 20^th century realist and abstract American paintings.

Our design introduces a freestanding Cube that subdivides the long and narrow space into three zones, a front exhibition space, a central service core and a rear art storage area. The Cube, clad in salvaged rosewood repurposed from the gallery’s previous location, houses two back-to back private functions, an office and a viewing room for showing art to clients by appointment. The Cube is intersected by a dynamic sheetrock ceiling whose contours give spatial definition—a sense of place—to each of the three activity areas. The ceiling’s undulating surface reinforces two view corridors that afford uninterrupted views from one end of the gallery to the other.