Starchitect David Adjaye’s $21 million Center for Art and Culture project has been given the green light by Colgate University’s board of trustees, Syracuse.com reports.
Building works in the village of Hamilton, New York, are due to begin this summer, and expected to take about a year to complete. Last December, Colgate was awarded a $750,000 Regional Economic Development Council grant for the project.
The center will house the artworks and artifacts currently held at the Picker Gallery of Art and the Longyear Museum of Anthropology, within the Colgate campus. It will feature three interconnected buildings that will be used as galleries, as well as a sculpture court.
The building was specifically designed for a site formerly occupied by a hardware store, in the heart of the historic village. In July 2013, during the presentation of the project, Adjaye explained that introducing a cultural and educational institution in a commercial district would “give us the opportunity to have a new way of understanding the nature of that area.”
Tanzania-born London-based Adjaye has extensive experience designing museums and art spaces. Recent projects include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (see Smithsonian’s $2 Billion Overhaul Places Emphasis on Art).