Virginia art museum gets bold new design

ROANOKE, Va. — Until now, the prominent features of Roanoke's skyline have been neon: a Dr Pepper sign, a giant star atop Mill Mountain and an animated coffee pot that pours its contents into a cup. Not far away, "Jesus Saves" glows in red from a hilltop church.

But there is a new addition under construction in this old railroad city in the mountains of western Virginia: a $66 million contemporary art museum of steel, patinated zinc and glass under construction on a prominent downtown site amid 1920s-era brick facades.

The building will provide a new home for the Art Museum of Western Virginia, which will be renamed the Taubman Museum of Art when it opens in November.

The building was designed by Randall Stout, a Los Angeles architect, who said the exterior was drawn after months of working on plans for the interior.

"The beginning of bending roofs started to happen very quickly and very intuitively," he said. The result — undulating roofs with sharp peaks unlike any building in the southeastern U.S. — could be evocative of the surrounding mountains.

Or not. One critic thought the rendering published in The Roanoke Times looked like "the wreck of the Flying Nun."

"We've had a lot of people who really don't like the building, and a lot of people who love the building, and a lot of people who can't make up their minds whether they like it or not," said Georganne Bingham, the Art Museum of Western Virginia's director.

The mixed reaction was expected, she said.

"It's a work of art," Bingham said. "That makes it very emotional for people."

While some locals have expressed wariness, the bold design of Frank Gehry's protege is playing well elsewhere. It received an American Architecture Award last year from the Chicago Athenaeum, and Bingham said she expects an increased number of visitors from around the world as the fall opening date approaches.

Stout believes skeptics may be won over once they visit the museum.

"I think people will walk in and understand that the way the spaces flow and the high volumes of ceilings, the washing of natural light — I think they'll recognize that as striking and much different than entering maybe a more conventional building," he said.

Stout draws inspiration in part from his childhood in rural east Tennessee, where he often played in an old tobacco barn. Its curing wings, high-ceiling hayloft and the ribbons of light that filtered through spaces in its wooden planks made him feel like he was in an elegant cathedral.