The Fresco Building, which is a part of The Menil Collection, will be repurposed into a new art space. (Courtesy Paul Warchol)
Officials with The Menil Collection announced June 17 that a historic structure on the art museum's campus will be repurposed over the next year and a half to become a new space for semi-permanent, site-specific commissions.
The history
The space, known as the Fresco Building, has been closed for nearly a decade, according to a news release on the project. It served as the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum from 1997 to roughly 2018 and housed two 13th-century frescoes that were restored and held on extended loan from the Holy Archbishopric of Cyprus, a religious leader from one of the oldest Eastern Orthodox churches in the world.
After the frescoes—described as paintings that are usually created on walls by applying water-based pigments on specific types of surfaces—were returned to Cyprus in 2012, the chapel was deconsecrated and ultimately closed in 2018.
A tribute to the building's history is expected to be housed in the repurposed space with an educational display in the building's foyer.
A new chapter
The reopening of the repurposed building is scheduled for late 2027, which officials from The Menil Collection said will coincide with the art museum's 40th anniversary celebrations.
Director Rebecca Rainbow said the milestone will be anchored by exhibitions that explore the museum's past, present and future, including a new exhibition for the Fresco Building by inaugural artist Teresita Fernández.
Teresita Fernández is a Brooklyn-based artist. (Sarah Hobson)
"As one of the highlights, Teresita Fernández’s extraordinary installation at the Fresco Building will join the Menil’s other single-artist buildings, the Cy Twombly Gallery and the Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall," she said. "In recognition of the Fresco Building’s origins, her ambitious, site-specific artwork will address themes of spirituality and the human condition.”
About the project
Fernández's collections often reflect the intimacies between matter, human beings and locations, while questioning ideas about land and landscape, per the release. She said it is an "immense honor" to have been chosen to reimagine the Fresco Building.
"For the last thirty years, my practice has questioned how we construct notions of landscape and place," she said in the release. "This project gives me a unique opportunity, on a monumental scale, to continue to unravel the intimacies between human beings and matter as well as the more numinous landscapes we carry within.”
Fernández's artwork for the building will be a five-year, site-specific commission.
