Art Museum’s Visible Vault Removes Cloak of Mystery

By Gloria Wester

W!VG Staff

The Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) has a “room with a view.” In fact, the new storage facility, the Visible Vault, has several fascinating rooms that reveal the secrets of preparing artwork for shipping and safe storage.

From the Yellowstone Art Museum at 401 North 27th Street, visitors are able to follow the artistic fish that designate the path to the new facility at 505 North 26th Street, which formerly housed Northland Automotive Industrial Supply.

“The museum will continue to receive art for exhibition at its main building and prepare it for exhibit at that site,” said Yellowstone Art Museum Executive Director Robyn G. Peterson. “The Visible Vault is the site for preparing and storing works that are in the museum’s permanent collection or exhibits that are being returned from being on loan to other museums.”

Peterson pointed out the location of the donor wall that thanks the benefactors who helped the Visible Vault become a reality. The total cost of the Visible Vault is $2,646,500. Peterson said that significant funding came primarily from a major grant from the Charles M. Bair Family Trust, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust ($400,000), and the Kresge Foundation ($400,000). An accommodations tax Tourism Infrastructure Investment Program grant added another $46,500. At the grassroots level, several dozen private businesses and individuals gave gifts. A few discretionary allocations from the county (about $12,500 in all) are in the total, too.

“We have worked to make this building as ‘green’ as possible,” said Peterson. “Climate control required for artwork make some aspects of conservation a challenge,” she said. “We have ground-source heating and cooling. The building has amazing insulation. It may be the best insulated building in the city,” she quipped. “Anywhere we could make a low-impact choice, without compromising art preservation standards, we did.”

The architects worked to incorporate original features of the building when feasible in the quest to make it an art space. The beautiful wooden ceilings and beams were in the automotive warehouse and were refinished, creating a warm, beautiful ceiling.

The building needed a new parking lot. Lots of folks had an unknowing role in making the glass parking lot. It is made of over a half million recycled glass beer bottles. “The parking lot has a nice sparkle to it,” said Peterson. “A binding component holds the smooth pieces together and the new technology provides a drainage through the glass, rather than run-off.”

“Transparency” is the one-word mission statement of the new vault. “We are transparent literally and figuratively,” said Peterson. “People are now able to watch work in progress through glass. We have an artist-in-residence studio. People can watch art in the making. They can see works being photographed and works being prepared for exhibit in the art lab through the 7-by-7-foot windows.”

The facility has space for small meetings of up to 50 people. It also offers public access to computers loaded with software to help with research of artwork. “For example, when all of the data are entered, a person could type in ‘black horses’ and retrieve all the artwork items in our inventory that have black horses incorporated into them.”

The public will eventually get to be “in the know” about all aspects of the project. Each area and activity will soon be interpreted with signs and information. “We’ll interpret everything,” said Peterson. “We’ve pointed out where the 10 wells in the ground for the ground-source heating and cooling system are, even though they’re buried and invisible. Some of the interpretive signage is waiting on additional funding.”

The Visible Vault project adds another aspect that has been needed at YAM, according to Peterson. “We now have a greatly enhanced inventory of our collection online.”

Peterson and her YAM board are very proud of the facility, the only one of its “transparent” kind in a huge region.

“It brings the artwork into contact with the public in a completely new way. That’s a great art asset,” said Peterson.

YAM gets some funding from Yellowstone County taxes. “Our allocation from the county for fiscal year 2011-2012 is $142,492. This is used for general operating support and primarily covers costs associated with the building,” explained Peterson. The balance of YAM’s budget comes from memberships to the museum ($65 a year for a household membership), from grants and gifts and from the annual auction in March.

Admission to Yellowstone Art Museum is $6 for adults and $4 for seniors, $3 for students and free for children age 6 and up. That admission price also covers admission to the Visible Vault collection.

Regular art museum hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, 10-5, Thursday and Friday, 10-8, and Sunday, 11-4. Contact the museum at 256-6804.