Description 1971-1974

With the addition of the wing designed by the architectural firm of Hayes & Ruth in 1958, the galleries at The Cleveland Museum of Art lost the natural symmetry provided by the original building as well as their chronological arrangement. The initial arrangement of art after the addition was not satisfactory to Sherman Lee, and he began to consider alternatives as early as the 1960s. The museum funded a trip by Paul C. Ruth (of Hayes & Ruth) to Europe where he explored gallery arrangements at famous museums. After returning Ruth reported his findings to museum staff and continued to work with the museum toward implementing changes in the gallery structure. By 1964, however, the museum staff felt pressure to plan for the Golden Anniversary and Lee and the trustees decided to table any action on gallery rearrangement until after 1966. By that time the need not only for gallery rearrangement but also for more space in general became apparent to Lee and the trustees. The focus shifted to designing a new wing for the museum along with a new auditorium. The former auditorium was renovated to provide gallery space for the Asian collection, which had grown exponentially under Lee's supervision as curator of Oriental art. The 1971 addition provided new special exhibition galleries, a necessity given the increasing importance of special exhibitions. During the building of the new wing the trustees and Lee were finally able to tackle the problem of gallery arrangement, deciding upon a chronological arrangement that would follow current thinking on the development of Western art. The sequence would begin with the art of Classical and Mediterranean civilizations and progress forward chronologically through early Christian art, Medieval, Renaissance, and so forth, until the present day. Art of the Americas, prior to Western influence, and Asian art would be shown separately. African and Pacific tribal art would be shown in relation to their impact on Western Art. The new arrangement would also combine work in different media into the same galleries, a fairly radical idea for the time. The process required the renovation and renumbering of nearly all of the galleries on the second floor of the museum.

The museum described the gallery renovations as phases III-V of a five step renovation process that began with the creation of the Oriental galleries. Phase II consisted of the installation of an eighteenth-century French room from Rouen, with adjacent galleries. Phase III was the renovation of the east galleries of the 1958 building covering ancient, Islamic and Byzantine art. The west side of the 1958 building, which once held the Asian art collection, was renovated for nineteenth-century American and European art galleries in phase IV. The Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo galleries in the original 1916 building were renovated in phase V. The last three phases, the focus of these records, took place between 1972 and 1976 with money from grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and funds raised by the museum. Phases III-V were the heart of the renovation and reinstallation of the upper-level galleries. Maps detailing the renovation focus solely on the last three phases. Perhaps to make the renovation process seem part of a larger scheme, the project was described in five phases, though the inclusion of the renovation of the eighteenth-century French galleries as phase II appeared to have happened after the other phases had already been planned, indicated by hand-written renumbering of the phases in the records.

The records begin with a description of the overall plan of the renovation, including some annotated maps detailing the locations of the renovations. The records include fund-raising letters, detailed cost analyses, descriptions of the work, and copies of contracts for phase III. Records relating to phase III make up the bulk of the material. There are no records relating specifically to phase II. All the records relating to the Oriental gallery renovation are located separately with the records of the 1971 building.