STATE COLLEGE — After years of planning and construction, Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art opened its doors to the public at its new location on Saturday, June 1. The museum celebrated the opening with guided tours through the galleries and the neighboring Arboretum at Penn State on both Saturday and Sunday.
According to the museum’s mission statement, the Palmer serves the university’s overall land-grant mission of teaching, which is noticeable throughout the collections on display.
“As an institution committed to Penn State’s land-grant mission of teaching, research and public service, the Palmer Museum fosters critical thinking and curiosity in new spaces that are welcoming and accessible for all,” Erin Coe, director of the Palmer Museum of Art, said.
The Palmer prides itself as the largest art museum between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with 10,750 pieces in its still-expanding collection. The opening weekend at the Palmer Museum celebrated its growth as the museum looks to what it can offer the community in years to come.
The New Building
The art the Palmer has to offer starts outside, beginning with the architecture of the building. The building was designed to integrate art, architecture and nature by highlighting a landscape similar to natural settings.
The Palmer Museum of Art was originally located on Curtin Road at the core of University Park’s campus, but its new location on 650 Bigler Road situates the 73,000-square-foot building next to the Arboretum at Penn State, further emphasizing that connection with art and nature.
From its sandstone exterior to the five acres of land and rolling grasses on which the building sits, the exterior design choices are distinctly intentional.
“As you gaze out the windows of the Palmer Museum upon the grounds of the Arboretum and the vistas beyond, it is easy to see how the landscape has provided the inspiration for the presentation of the collection that you will see today as well as the design of the building itself,” Coe highlighted. “It is only fitting that a new university art museum building should embody the architecture and design sensibilities of its own time. As you can see today, the Palmer’s new state of the art facility does justice to our expanding art collections. It meets the needs of a teaching museum of and for 21st-century audiences.”
The $85 million project broke ground in August 2021 and was spearheaded by the architectural group Allied Works and the landscape architectural firm Reed Hildebrand.
“It only takes one step into the new museum to realize the spaces were developed with the specific goals of nurturing appreciation for the landscape and facilitating connections and inquiry across disciplines,” B. Stephen Carpenter II, the Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, said.
The new Palmer Museum location also includes a cafe, gift shop and “Exploration Gallery” with hands-on activities for younger art enthusiasts. It features event and educational spaces as well as the galleries, providing enhanced learning opportunities for both Penn State and K-12 students, as well as the public. Its location makes it more accessible for guests compared to the previous building in the central campus.
The building that previously served the Palmer Museum is looking towards a $40 million renovation to repurpose the space into classrooms for the university’s growing undergraduate enrollment. The old Palmer, founded in 1972, reopened to the public in 1993 and the museum celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022.
Galleries and Exhibitions
The Palmer Museum of Art is a two-story building featuring 20 galleries, some of which are permanent and others that rotate exhibitions. With the growing total of almost 11,000 pieces in the Palmer Museum’s collection, only about 7% can be displayed at once, an increase from the roughly 4% the previous Palmer building was able to exhibit.
A main theme explored in Palmer’s inaugural exhibitions is “Roots and Renewal,” which explores lineages of art. According to the museum, this theme lays the groundwork for the museum’s community-centered approach to the presentation and interpretation of the art pieces.
“We wanted to focus on a new interpretive framework for the collection, and this ‘Roots and Renewal’ represents that theme. We’re really thinking about artistic legacies, heritage, art history, in a new way,” Brandi Breslin, director of education at the Palmer Museum, explained. “The Palmer Museum of Art is 50-plus years old now, but we’re reinstalled and renewed here in this new building at the Arboretum. So, this permanent collection reinstallation marries that idea about how the museum is renewed overall, and we’ve taken that into how we’re looking at the permanent collection.”
Several special inaugural exhibitions debuted at the grand opening on Saturday, June 1. Titled “Made in PA,” the collections highlight three generations of artists who either are Pennsylvania homegrown or made their careers in the state. The themes of the pieces in this installation remain relevant to Pennsylvania’s history, culture, geography and more. The sections in this installation include “Rooted in Realism,” “Pennsylvania Modern,” “The Land and its Legacies,” “Pop and Politics” and “PA Now.”
Sister to “Made in PA” is “Made in PA on Paper,” which features prints, watercolors and drawings from artists in the permanent collections who have roots in the commonwealth.
“The Art of Teaching: Medical Education and the Integrated Curriculum” is another rotating exhibition that partners with Penn State’s College of Medicine and pays homage to the university’s academic foundations by highlighting an intersection of art and science curriculum.
“This exhibition does bring out works and different themes that connect to our work with the College of Medicine in bringing their students here to integrate arts into their curriculum. So, we’re looking at ideas here that represent sort of those easy intersections,” Breslin noted.
Breslin explained that the museum is looking to continue to make those connections with various departments at Penn State. The goal is to change the space every semester in partnership with one or two faculty members.
Other special rotating exhibitions at the Palmer Museum include “Politics and Daily Life,” “The Triumph of Nature: Art Nouveau from the Chrysler Museum of Art,” “The Global Majority: Counternarratives in Photography and Print,” “Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper,” “Mark Dion and Alexia Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld” and “Re/Collecting the Andes: Andean Art, Science and the Sacred at Penn State.”
In addition to inaugural and rotating exhibitions, there are permanent collections to be seen throughout the museum. The Palmer features American, African, European, contemporary, glass and ceramics, to name just a few.
“This is more than a museum,” Carpenter remarked. “It is more than a place that displays art. It’s more than a building or facility that collects and houses and curates exhibitions of art. In my view, the Palmer Museum of Art is an interdisciplinary institute for inquiry, knowledge construction and wonder. That’s what happens here.”
Summer Programming
The grand opening on Saturday, June 1, and Sunday, June 2, also served as a kick-off to a summer full of events and programming at the Palmer Museum of Art.
“We are inaugurating the new building with a fun-filled opening weekend of activities and a summer schedule featuring a host of new programs, including first-time summer camps, creative workshops, yoga classes and much more,” Coe emphasized.
Throughout the summer, there will be drop-in tours to explore and get to know the new Palmer Museum of Art. These tours began on Wednesday, June 6, and will continue several times a week through Thursday, Aug. 15.
Also throughout the summer, the Palmer will host its gallery talks, which are in-depth discussions about select exhibitions led by curators, educators and invited specialists. The first gallery talk of the season will be on “Made in PA” with Coe and Assistant Director Joyce Robinson at 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 13.
More fun activities to look forward to at the Palmer Museum include a drop-in workshop on weaving, studio sessions in creative self-care, yoga, a family day with pop-inspired prints, a sneaker painting workshop, adult classes, after-hours at the museum, open houses, kids summer camps and much more.
On select days throughout the summer, the Palmer Museum of Art will observe “quiet hours.” These quiet hours are designed to accommodate visitors in a hushed environment. The scheduled quiet hours avoid other programming, tours and activities for a solitary museum experience.
Visiting the Palmer
The new Palmer Museum of Art building is located at 650 Bigler Road, beside the H.O. Smith Botanic Gardens in the Arboretum at Penn State.
Admission to the Palmer Museum is free, but a donation of $7 is welcomed. Paid parking can be found in the Lewis Katz Building lot across Bigler Road.
The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; from noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday; and with newly scheduled extended hours from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday. The Palmer is closed on Monday, Tuesday and most holidays.
For more information about the museum, programming and more, visit palmermuseum.psu.edu.
