A Bigger Phillips, With Deeper Pockets

When Phillips started the museum 84 years ago, the National Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art didn't exist. Phillips invited Washingtonians to view works by Picasso, Klee, Monet, Matisse and Degas in his home. Since then, the house-turned-museum has been a draw for lovers of impressionist and modern American and European art. A $7.8 million annex was added in 1989.

As the Phillips planned its latest changes, it had to deal with its neighbors. Those who live along 21st Street NW have had a love-hate relationship with the museum. Having Renoir on the street was a plus. But for almost 20 years, says Vince Micone, chairman of the neighborhood liaison committee, the two sides battled about traffic, parking, catering trucks and noise.

Several years ago, the neighbors and the museum sat down to figure out a better way to coexist. Out of protracted talks, which went to a mediator for nine sessions, they worked out guidelines on 54 points, including the times events should begin and end.

"We are in a residential neighborhood, and by history and right, they have a right to exist there. But they didn't care much for the neighbors' peace of mind," said Richard Suisman, a member of the liaison committee. Now things have changed, he said.

All of the changes and expansion have taken place without closing the museum, but portions had to be closed temporarily.

"Revenue shrank. Attendance shrank. Membership shrank," Gates says. "But it sustained a level of quality."

During the scale-back, annual attendance dropped to 95,000, from a pre-construction attendance of 160,000. This year it rose to 167,000, with the three-month Modigliani exhibit bringing in 74,000.

Construction on the expansion, which will add a total of 30,000 square feet, started nearly two years ago. Two levels -- two-thirds of the building -- are underground.

The architects of record, Cox, Graae & Spack, had to shoehorn the new features into a narrow space and excavate down into the rock. Preservation rules kept the blond facade of the old apartment building, but the Phillips gutted everything behind that.

With the expansion, the Phillips will have a 180-seat auditorium, a new library and archive, conservation laboratory, classrooms and new areas for student exhibitions. The cafe has been overhauled and will face a new sculpture garden.

The new gallery space will provide room to show the collection of post-1950 contemporary art, much of which consists of canvases larger than the core impressionist collection. A room in the older part of the Phillips that was dedicated to the work of Mark Rothko has been disassembled and re-created in the new addition.

Accommodations for the museum's busy education programs are central to the new addition. The Phillips trains 700 teachers a year, and has been doing so without a classroom.

The first exhibition in the new space will be "Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Sickert: London and Paris, 1870-1910" in February.

During the construction, the Phillips sent many of its greatest paintings, including the famous Renoir, on tour. The exhibition, which includes 11 stops in the States and abroad, has drawn nearly 2 million people and provided substantial revenue for the Phillips.

The masterworks return home April 15.