Building Details

Now You See It Concealed curtain-wall details at Thomas Phifer and Partners’ new Glenstone Museum have big impact.

- Samuel Medina

Art isn’t the heart of the Glenstone Museum, which opened in October—water is. The museum consists of 11 stand-alone rooms, housing works by the likes of Brice Marden and Charles Ray. “Each room, or gallery, has different proportions and is unique in the way it lives with the artworks,” says Thomas Phifer, the building’s architect. Viewed from outside, the siloed galleries look like stout turrets in a rolling landscape of weepy grasses, and are connected around a central reflecting pool. “You always re