After years of work, the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art (RMMA) is set to open to the public on Dec. 1-3, with a special student opening scheduled for Nov. 30.
Plans for the new art museum were first announced as part of the University’s 2007 update to the master plan. Ten years later, the $66 million lead gift, from Ernestine Raclin and her daughter and son-in-law Carmen and Chris Murphy, who lend the museum their names, began the process of choosing a design and building the RMMA.
The project was awarded to New York City-based architecture firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects in Dec. 2018. The two lead architects, Melissa DelVecchio ’94 and Tony McConnell ‘06, are both Notre Dame graduates. This is their second building on campus after their work on the Stayer Center which opened in 2013.
“It’s like doing a studio project for school that I got paid for,” McConnell said. “It was an extremely fulfilling opportunity.”
The construction, which began in April 2020, is the first of two phases that will make up the RMMA. This initial phase features galleries, an object study room, teaching spaces and a bookstore across four levels. The RMMA also has two unique spaces.
The first is the chapel located on the second floor. The space will be consecrated and named for Mary, Queen of Families. McConnell and DelVecchio said it was unusual to have a chapel in a university museum, but that it was something Notre Dame wanted from the start.
“It's really designed as a contemplative space to go view ecclesiastic art in a way that ecclesiastic art would have been displayed in an actual church,” McConnell said.
DelVecchio said that the chapel was designed to complement the art installations that were destined for the space. Well-known Italian artist Mimmo Paladino was commissioned to create several pieces of art for the chapel. Most notably the mosaic on the ceiling and the stained glass that will stand behind the altar.
“It was a much more hand-in-hand collaboration with the art installation and the architecture in that space, which is really unique,” DelVecchio said about the chapel. “We basically created the shape of the room and the shape of the ceiling. And then the artist articulated all the finishes in there,” she said.
The other space McConnell and DelVecchio highlighted was Ivan's Cafe on the ground floor. The cafe is named after Ivan Meštrović, a prominent Croatian sculptor who came to work and teach at Notre Dame at Fr. Hesburgh's invitation in 1955. McConnell said the space was designed directly as a result of student feedback.
“You'll either have really quiet places or you have really loud places and it would be really great to have a place to go to study, that would be halfway between,” McConnell said. “Students were very clear that there's not a place in between.”
Adjoining the main atrium, McConnell hopes Ivan's cafe will provide just that. He characterized it as a semi-quiet space with some activity, but where people will still be able to go study and get work done.
The new 70,000-square-foot museum is the latest addition to Notre Dame’s burgeoning arts district on the south side of campus. In the last 20 years, the University has inaugurated the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center (opened in 2004), the O’Neill Hall of Music (2017), the Walsh Family Hall of Architecture (2018) and the Hayes Family Sculpture Park (2018), all in the same area of campus.
DelVecchio said the new museum's location was intentionally chosen by the University to foster the relationship between the arts at Notre Dame and the wider South Bend community. She added that the Snite Museum of Art used to be in a similar position, but it was slowly isolated from the community by numerous University building projects in the 43 years since it opened, hurting visitor numbers.
“[Notre Dame] are really trying to pull the building towards the edge of campus to make it more accessible both to the community and to visitors, but also to the students so that all three of those audiences can feel more welcome,” DelVecchio said.
The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art will take over for the Snite Museum of Art, which had operated as the University’s art museum since it opened in Nov. 1980. The Snite, which closed last April, has been repurposed and will open in January as the Snite Research Center in the Visual Arts.
Raclin Murphy Museum of Art nears opening in November
A contemporary art gallery on the lower level of the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.
A mosaic on the ceiling of the chapel in the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.
A stained glass panel by Mimmo Palladino in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art's chapel.
The main atrium in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on Sept. 27.
