Work will begin in early 2026 on a projected $50 million transformation of the Art Institute of Chicago’s former principal exhibition space into a world-class conservation center — a project that will set off a domino-like series of other gallery reconfigurations around the museum.
James Rondeau, the museum’s president and director, called the project the biggest modification to the museum’s sprawling complex since the $294 million Modern Wing was completed in 2009.
“We will have one of the best facilities in the nation, not just in terms of size but in terms of talent, equipment and accessibility,” he said. “This is a big move for us, and it’s going to put conservation from a place of invisibility to centrality in its visibility in our campus.”
The 25,000-square-foot facility, to be known as the Grainger Center for Conservation and Science, will contain conservation laboratories, offices and a study center as well as a gallery offering conservation-related exhibitions and opportunities to watch conservators at work.
Showing visitors how conservation functions and why it is important is a growing trend at museums across the country. “It’s another way to really engage our public and diversify the types of experiences that we offer,” said Francesca Casadio, the Art Institute’s vice president and executive director of conservation and science. “It’s a way also of demonstrating that these objects have lives and they are not static.”
The two-story conservation center will occupy what was Regenstein Hall, the museum’s main temporary-exhibition gallery since it opened in the then-new Rice Building in 1988, and the first-floor space below it. That location made sense, Rondeau said, because it is the right size and proximate to necessary mechanical services.
Regenstein Hall will temporarily move to a space south of the museum’s Asian galleries that formerly housed works from the museum’s Arts of Africa and Ancient Americas collections.-.
Selections from the displaced Ancient Americas collection will be integrated into the Arts of the Americas display in the Rice Building. And parts of the Arts of Africa holding are showcased in “Critical Fabulation,” a recently opened Modern Wing exhibition guest curated by Simone Leigh, a Chicago-born artist who represented the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
The new temporary location for Regenstein Hall is about half the size of its 15,000-square-foot former space, but Rondeau said the smaller configuration will not be an impediment, and he is confident it can accommodate the same number of visitors.
“In the intermediate phase — the contraction — we’re programming to make it work, to make sense,” he said.
A permanent location for Regenstein Hall is yet to be determined, but Rondeau said it will be the same size as the former space and he wants it to be immediately accessible to visitors and have what he called “storefront energy.”
“My intention long term,” he said, “is to put exhibitions in a more front-and-center place — either on Michigan Avenue or Columbus Drive with a greater degree of transparency and availability so that if you are driving by the Art Institute you can see there is a Van Gogh show on.”
The Grainger Center has been designed by the Spanish firm Barozzi Veiga, which the museum hired in 2017 to create an architectural master plan and help rethink how collections are presented. Partnering on the project is Interactive Design Architects in Chicago and Samuel Anderson Architects in New York.
Rondeau and Casadio described the project as the museum’s most significant investment in conservation since the museum hired its first painting conservator in 1956. “I’ve been here now for 22 years, and it’s definitely the high point of my career,” Casadio said. “It will just put us on a completely new level.”
Such an overhaul has been needed for decades, Rondeau said, because the current facilities do not match the museum’s top-level conservation team, which is currently spread across multiple locations within the building. “We literally have scientists working in repurposed broom closets,” he said.
The new center will bring the museum’s 30 conservators and 10 other department members together in one place for the first time, providing greater efficiency and collaboration. Among other improvements, its 20-foot ceilings will allow specialists to more easily work on large-scale paintings and objects.
When “The Assumption of the Virgin” (1577-79), a 13¼-foot-tall painting by El Greco, was conserved in 2018, Frank Zuccari, the museum’s former head of conservation, had to work with the painting on its side.
The new center, expected to open in Fall 2027, is named for the Grainger Foundation, which has supported conservation work at the museum for several decades and provided the largest contribution for the center.