Museum hits fundraising midpoint

The University Museum has raised about half of the $15.5 million it's seeking for the building of a new, 35,000 square-foot wing that will house some climate-sensitive collections and provide much-needed space, museum officials said. Administrators hope to begin work on the new wing -- the first addition to the building since 1971 -- at the end of 1999, approximately 100 years after the current building first opened. The construction should take about 18 months, and the new section should open in 2001. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology launched the campaign last October and has raised about $8 million in private donations toward the as-yet-unnamed wing, according to Director of Development and Special Events Leslie Kruhly. She stressed the entire cost of the wing will be funded through private donations from "overseers and other patrons of the museum" -- and not with University money. Although blueprints of the new wing weren't available yesterday, the section will extend north from the museum's South Street side, near 33rd Street, Kruhly said. The addition -- about three-fifths the size of a football field -- will increase the size of the 240,000 square-foot museum by approximately 15 percent. Kruhly said the new wing is designed to protect artifacts made from organic materials such as leather which have not been stored under proper space or climate conditions. It will also relieve overcrowding throughout the museum. "The museum's main priority as an institution is safeguarding its collections," Kruhly said. "We were in danger of jeopardizing its contents." And a new home for the so-called perishable materials "will make it easier for people coming to the University of Pennsylvania to carry out research," according to Anthropology Professor Robert Schuyler. "Right now, [the artifacts are] not under very good conditions," Schuyler said, describing the current setup as "very crowded." The wing will open up space throughout the rest of the museum, he added. Museum officials said they'll make a formal announcement about the project next month, during which time they will distribute plans for the wing and begin seeking donations from around Philadelphia. Additionally, museum officials are in the early stages of planning a new 33rd Street entrance to the facility, although the cost of that project has not yet been determined, Kruhly said. The museum, which was founded in 1887, attracts about 130,000 visitors each year -- 25,000 of whom pay an admission fee -- and has approximately 3,000 members. It has a projected budget of $9.4 million for the year ending June 30, 1998, and it receives approximately half of its funding from the University. The most recent addition to the museum -- an academic wing that houses the Anthropology Department -- was built in 1971.