In June, the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State debuted a new building designed by Allied Works and landscape architect Reed Hilderbrand, who previously designed Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum. University museums usually offer a more intimate art appreciation experience than other institutions but the Palmer Museum of Art is defying that stereotype with its three-year, $85 million now-completed expansion. The museum, which reopened in June, is now housed in a 73,000-square-foot building—nearly double the previous footprint—with twenty galleries (fifteen permanent galleries plus five galleries devoted to special exhibitions) adjoining the H.O. Smith Botanic Gardens. There are also new educational and event spaces along with a museum store, café and outdoor sculpture path.

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As part of the opening, the museum unveiled Dale Chihuly’s Lupine Blue Persian Wall, a 13-foot-long site-specific installation inspired by the university’s arboretum, as well as several new acquisitions by artists such as Fernando “Coco” Bedoya, Joseph Delaney, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rodrigo Lara, David MacDonald, Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Toshiko Takaezu, Akio Takamori, Kukuli Velarde, Patti Warashina, Purvis Young, Malcah Zeldis and Arnold Zimmerman. It also unveiled a new way of seeing the university’s collection of American, European, African and postwar modern and contemporary art. Nine “perforated stainless-steel lenses” give visitors an expansive view of the surrounding landscape while allowing natural light into the galleries—filtered, of course, to safeguard the works on view. That is, Palmer Museum of Art director Erin M. Coe tells Observer, part of what makes the institution........

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