Saturday afternoon saw throngs coming to Overton Park to check out the city’s newest old museum. The Metal Museum, once known by the charmingly awkward name National Ornamental Metal Museum, took over the building that once housed the Memphis College of Art. The museum still has its original grounds on the banks of the Mississippi River where it will be the Metal Museum on the Bluff and used for artist residencies.
But the focus Saturday was on its new Overton Park home, which is far larger than the old site and offers an expansion of everything: gallery space, outdoor sculptures, classrooms, the library, the gift shop, a proper restaurant/cafe, and a major foundry facility with a blacksmith shop, fabrication yard, and demonstration area.
There was a line to get in the gift shop, which did a substantial business, which brought a smile to museum’s executive director Carissa Hussong. She was circulating among the visitors, being interviewed by media and schmoozing with politicians, including U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) who is winding down his service to the Ninth Congressional District and was introducing Chaz Molder, the mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, and Democratic candidate for the Fifth District that now snakes from middle Tennessee into Memphis.
Visitors endured the heat to walk the sculpture garden and look down into the foundry, or go out front and listen to live music and partake of goodies from food trucks. Most of the action was inside where it was cooler, if crowded. Workshops and demonstrations for all ages were going on in the education area and foundry.
Many of those walking the halls and open spaces were familiar with the building from its college of art days. The original building, done to be an art school by renowned modernist architect Roy Harrover, needed to make the transition to a museum. One of those looking on Saturday was Tony Pellicciotti, managing director and managing principal at LRK Architects Designers Planners, which handled the repurposing of the facility.
“The two most significant moves on the building are the entry and the new foundry building,” he said. He gave credit to LRK architect Krissy Flickinger who led the team that transformed the facility, combining new design with an old, historic building. “The new building is trying to be referential to the existing one,” Pellicciotti said, and that notion came up time and again in conversations among visitors Saturday.
Many who were there Saturday and had known the Memphis College of Art building as staff, faculty, or students, admired the improvements, from improved lighting to additional elevators.
But mostly, it was an appreciation that the heart of creativity and the pursuit of art remained in place, and was destined to carry on.
