SMOA KIND OF WONDERFUL

If you're looking for 20th-century art in Sarasota, options are scarce; they're downright rare if your heart's set on the 21st. Sure, the Ringling Museum has something on tap from time to time -- like the current fabulous exhibit of Magnum photographers -- but to see contemporary art in Sarasota or nearby, you've got two choices: Regularly visit the handful of galleries in town where such work is shown, or head north to catch rare showcases like two recent exhibits on loan from the Miami-based Rubell Family Collection at the Tampa Museum of Art.

Well, local art lovers rejoice. Soon -- relatively soon, anyway -- you'll have one more local fix for your jones, and cultural tourists will enjoy yet another reason to touchdown at SRQ. The long-awaited Sarasota Museum of Art (aka SMOA, pronounced "samoa," like the Girl Scout cookie) and Visual Arts Education Center (VAEC) takes one step closer to existence this week when designs for the new facility go on view to the public at Ringling College of Art and Design's Selby Gallery. At 60,000 square feet -- 11,000 of which will be devoted to exhibitions of modern and contemporary art -- the massive complex promises to be a player in the area and beyond.

The old Sarasota High School building on Tamiami Trail, a three-story, red brick collegiate Gothic-style behemoth with a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, will serve as the new museum's site. Adaptive reuse of the 1927 building will combine with new construction of a contemporary glass-and-white-walled addition and revamped interiors to create an understated showroom for 20th- and 21st-century art. Student studios, an auditorium, a small café and outdoor courtyards round out the bill.

Sarasota architecture firm ADP Group competed against three other local firms and one from Tampa to win the job. With the help of nationally known museum design consultant Vincent Ciulla, also of Sarasota, ADP created an innovative solution to the SMOA's two-fold identity as a museum space and studios for Ringling students. (In 2005, when the idea of converting the high-school building into a collaborative space for the college and the museum surfaced, it quickly became apparent that for fundraising and administrative purposes the museum should become a division within the school.)

"We gave them a real technical word," jokes ADP Group's Javier Suarez, who leads the firm's team of architects. "And we called it 'the sandwich.'"

Politely ignoring Ringling's request for a facility with exhibits on the first floor and artists' studios on the second and third, ADP Group situated the gallery smack in the middle to enable observation into -- and out of -- studios above and below. In their design, visitors enter through the original Sarasota High lobby, where vaulted ceilings and terrazzo floors will be preserved, and walk through the brick building into a minimalist glass structure nestled behind it. The glass structure offers access to all three floors of the converted high school through an open system of stairs and elevators where museum visitors and students can mingle. Two outdoor courtyards flank either side of the addition, one a sculpture garden, the other a deck area with access to a small café and auditorium.

Real surprises come on the second floor, in the museum's galleries. There, narrow windows set into corridors offer visitors the chance to peer down into high-ceilinged, first floor studios without distracting the students working below. In the largest gallery, an enclosed glass hallway overhead allows students circulating on the building's third floor to people-watch as visitors encounter artwork in the museum space.

"By creating openings between the ground floor and the second floor and openings as well between the upper level ... and the second level, two things happen," Suarez explained. "Number one, the museum visitors could peek -- and the idea was not to be totally connected, but to have peeks -- into the process that was going on below and above them. But also the students would have the unique opportunity of seeing the reaction of the public as they interact with the work of art."

The unconventional design impressed a selection jury that included one Ringling student and members of the public, as well as museum and art professionals. The jury felt the ADP Group design best addressed the two-pronged mission of SMOA/VAEC to be an exhibition space and a learning center, said Ringling College president Larry Thompson. Both Suarez and Thompson say the set-up will encourage students and visitors to connect process with product, creating a feedback loop between art and its production.

Because Ringing already runs a teaching gallery -- Selby will continue to serve in that capacity -- SMOA's aim is to reach beyond exhibiting art related to the school's curriculum. Still, the SMOA design puts a premium on interactivity and learning. The challenge in an art museum environment is to present an engaging, interactive building without upstaging the actual artwork, explained Suarez. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, for example, often overshadows what it holds.

What the new SMOA does not include is storage for a permanent collection, and that brings me to the only disappointing news about the museum: They don't plan on leaping headfirst into collecting. For a while at least, traveling shows of contemporary and modern art will fill the space, Thompson said. He expects exhibits on seminal local artists like Sarasota modernist Syd Solomon, and the museum will collect in the long term, but first they have a sizeable nut to crack just to build the thing. Try $24 million on for size.

Best case scenario, Ringling and SMOA -- already fundraising quietly for some time -- could reach that goal in a mere 12 months; construction would take another year and a half on top of that, said Thompson. Before arriving at Ringling, he oversaw the creation of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, and says this sort of timeframe is par for the course. The Hall of Fame project took a decade; by comparison, SMOA seems to be on a fairly fast track.

Thompson's guess? The Ringling prez is putting his money on 2010.