Taubman Museum

110 Salem Avenue SE, Roanoke, VA 24011
Main Line: 540.342.5760    Event Tickets: 540.204.4122

Tuesday-Wednesday, Friday-Saturday: 10am - 5pm
Thursday: 10am - 7pm
Sunday: Noon - 5pm

At the heart of downtown Roanoke, the new 81,000 square foot Taubman Museum of Art proves an arresting landmark for visitors arriving from US I-581. As Roanoke's most contemporary structure, it provides an analog for the city's evolution from industrial and manufacturin

g town to technology-driven city. The building's forms and materials evoke both the drama of the surrounding mountainous landscape of the Shenandoah Valley and the lyrically gritty industrial-era building culture of the great early 20th century railroad boom, when Roanoke came to prominence as a switchpoint city of the new South.

The finish on its undulating, angel hair-finish stainless steel roof forms reflects the rich palette of colors found in the sky and the seasonal landscape. Inspired by mountain streams, translucent glass surfaces - some brilliantly clear and others frosted to filter and modulate interior daylight - emerge from the building's mass to create canopies of softly diffused illumination over the public spaces and gallery level. As it rises to support the stainless steel roof, a layered pattern of angular exterior walls surfaced in shingled, patinated zinc gives an earthen and aged quality to the façade.

The building occupies three levels above ground, with all functions organized off a central 4,300 square foot atrium space. The atrium serves as a multi-use "facility within a facility" for ticketing and information, temporary installation of large-scale sculpture and small exhibitions, public meeting, special events and performances, and spontaneous, informal encounters. The glass atrium allows the lobby to be filled with natural light during the day, while at night the translucent glass roof surfaces are illuminated to allow the volume to glow like a beacon and draw visitors to museum activities.

"Hokie" stone, an Appalachian Dolomite limestone native to western Virginia and quarried in Blacksburg, is used in the lobby, shop and café, as well as in other public spaces throughout the new building, adding a familiar, natural texture and color to the interior. Variations of tone and texture in the stone are intended to evoke the striations, clefts and eroded rock surfaces found in the region's famous caverns, cliffs and river gorges.

Public spaces, including the Museum lobby, café, shop, auditorium, and education areas, are located on the ground level, along with support areas associated with the loading dock, art receiving and shipping, and security.

More than 16,000 square feet of gallery space for permanent collection and temporary exhibition galleries are located on the building's second level. Illuminated glass treads lead visitors up a limestone-clad grand staircase to the galleries. At the landing, a luminous sculptural ceiling of cascading, back-lit, translucent polycarbonate panels will draw visitors forward through the central gallery hall to the permanent collection galleries. In the contemporary art and American art galleries, this luminous ceiling feature extends into these spaces to diffuse daylight from clerestory windows and skylights above.

The third, and uppermost, level of the new building holds the TMA board room, director's suite, and staff offices. The third floor administration level receives a significant amount of natural daylight, which will permeate through the many strategically placed clerestories created by the building's undulating, layered roof forms.

The Taubman Museum of Art contains advanced technology for distance learning to serve the entire region of western Virginia. It features fiber optic cable links to broadband networks across the state to enhance K-12 education and provide greater access to the visual arts. Such technology also enables the museum to interface with artistic endeavors at museums, universities and other institutions across the Commonwealth, across the nation, and beyond.

In keeping with the trustees' mandate, the new Taubman Museum of Art features significant sustainable design components, including modulated day lighting, passive solar energy systems, a thermal conserving envelope, and computerized building management systems, among other ecologically smart mechanisms.

Summarizing his approach to the design for the Taubman Museum of Art, Randall Stout said, "A guiding principal of this project is creating a powerful relationship to the natural landscape and its influence over life, learning and art in Roanoke. Our references to nature are intended as deeply meaningful ones and are central to the purpose. At the completion of other buildings I've designed, I have heard new interpretations of the architecture. Sometimes these surprise me at first, but eventually I see the buildings through others' eyes, too. In this way, a new public building is like a Rorschach inkblot test. The beauty of architecture is that it creates a democratic situation by engaging every observer equally and making room for every possible interpretation. Like art, it connects people with their own past experiences and future ambitions, and provokes an intriguing array of responses. We hope the Taubman Museum of Art will function in just this way."

For more information on the architect, visit Randall Stout’s website.