Vero Beach Museum of Art Plans Expansion

Would you rather visit a museum with fine works of art or a garden with beautiful plants and flowers?

What if you could visit both at once? 

The upcoming expansion will bring the Vero Beach Museum of Art to a whole new scale, doubling the gallery space, adding a second story, and creating a rooftop terrace with views of the Indian River Lagoon. It will be welcoming to the community, with free admission to the first floor, which will include studios and classrooms for the educational programs, a large modern gallery to display acquisitions of the Athena Society, and a new café.

And, in the spirit of Vero Beach, it will combine artistry with gardens.

Under the current timetable, the new building will be completed in two years, but the museum will still be open during most of that time. Then, in 2027, it will close for six months immediately prior to the grand opening.

Executive director Brady Roberts says that when searching for the right architect, he made the distinctive nature of the Vero Beach area clear: “Most museums are urban, and this is not. We have a beautiful locale and people who really respect conservation.” The team at Allied Works, the architectural firm selected, “distinguished themselves by their embrace of the landscape,” working closely with Unknown Studio for landscape architecture. Despite the whimsical name “Unknown,” both firms are widely renowned. 

Thus, the gardens and landscape architecture will not be elements that are just added on after the buildings are finished; they are at the heart of the design. Inspiration was taken from some of the smaller museums of Europe—not the ones you might feel you have to visit on a grand tour, but ones that are well regarded internationally, beloved in their local communities, and integrated with nature.

Finding inspiration from nature has been intellectually stimulating for Roberts and for the architects. Early conversations included “discussions of gardens throughout history, going back to Babylon and Persia.” In those civilizations, gardens and palaces overlapped, and the ancient Persian term “pairidaeza,” referring to a parklike garden, is one of the linguistic sources for the English word “paradise.” With these historical precedents in mind, the new design for the museum features abundant courtyards to break down barriers between interior and exterior space. “The nature experience goes hand in hand with the art experience,” says Roberts.

Chief curator Caitlin Swindell agrees, adding an example: “A gallery on the second floor will focus on sculpture,” and with extensive windows, “people can look outside and make connections with outdoor sculptures and with nature.” Swindell also notes that the union of art and nature makes for beneficial effects upon museum visitors, both mentally and physically. “For me, the whole idea of visiting a museum is educational, but also experiential.”

To that end, the design takes advantage of the beauty of the area. Besides the rooftop terrace, the second story will have lagoon vistas. The entire museum will be elevated in comparison to the current building, and even the first floor will be 9 feet above sea level. That height serves the primary purpose of protecting artwork in the permanent collection and visiting exhibitions from potential rising waters during hurricanes. As a side benefit, it means there will be lagoon views even from the first floor. 

While some in the community have wondered how this will affect Riverside Park, the plan actually returns more than an acre of green space to the park. This is philosophically in keeping with the importance of landscape and nature in the entire design.

“We want this to belong to Vero,” says building committee co-chair Rick Segal. “It will be distinctively a part of the landscape. Everything has been carefully thought through to fit the surroundings.” Segal is also excited about what he calls the “legacy” nature of the project, as he hopes the expanded museum will continue to be valued by future generations. 

Anticipating that the building will be a landmark in the area, he says, “We don’t have a lot of height in Vero. The rooftop terrace will have a spectacular view of the lagoon and the landscape.”

Although the current building can seem “fortress-like,” as Roberts puts it, the new design will be more welcoming. There will be three entrances, and the gardens will certainly be inviting. “There’s no town square in Vero Beach. We want this to be the living room and the garden of the community.” As to the decision that entrance to the first floor will be free, he says, “What better invitation can we provide?”

Tom Piper, a board member and enthusiastic participant in the museum’s art history classes, loves all of these elements. The community aspect is especially important to him because his father taught art to elementary school students in his home in a small Virginia town. “He saw the surprise and excitement as these young people learned the techniques of art and began to create,” Piper recalls fondly. Thus, he is a big believer in “art for all” and finds the concept of welcome to be essential.

Of course, a fundamental aspect of the museum expansion is that gallery space will be doubled. What does that really mean? For a frame of reference, think of the exhibition “French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850–1950,” which was featured from January through June. In the new building, five exhibitions of that size could be housed at the same time. 

That’s not to say that having five major exhibitions at a time is the plan. However, the new building will certainly allow for shows of various sizes and designs to be on display simultaneously, adding variety to the museum experience and allowing for exhibitions that complement or contrast with one another.

Along with the increased space for traveling exhibitions, Swindell explains that some of the galleries will be “dedicated space for the permanent collection. This will allow us to show more of the permanent collection, and I like when that can be in dialogue with traveling exhibitions. It allows viewers to make deeper connections with works on view.”

At the moment, Swindell is playing a kind of chess game with herself, as she is working on the exhibition schedules for the current building while simultaneously planning those for the new edifice, with its vastly expanded space. She is enjoying the challenge, however. And she points out another benefit for the community: “We’ve always thought seasonally, but now there’s an opportunity to have a major traveling exhibition even during the summer. All our programming can be much more year-round.”

All this is possible because, as Segal emphasizes, the fundraising campaign has gone so well. “It created more enthusiasm than even we expected. We have had just remarkable generosity in this campaign.” With a project on this scale, there was inevitable doubt as to what response would be like. We’ve seen that people want to support it, and they will support it beyond our imagination.”

Roberts puts it this way: “Vero Beach is a remarkably generous place. We have a farsighted board and a great community. That’s part of what we all like about being here.”

Segal also observes that the expanded museum will be a more appealing destination for gifts or legacies of artwork. Vero Beach has a strong community of art collectors. “Collectors want to honor their artwork by making sure it is kept in company with other great works,” he observes. With the expansion, “people will take pride in the museum and be more comfortable donating or passing on their works of art.”

Segal concludes, “We will definitely be on the cultural map of South Florida.”

The expansion of the VBMA is like a tapestry with many threads: the beautiful new gardens; the views of the lagoon; the inspirations from nature and from history; the welcoming design for the community. And like the colorful threads of a tapestry, all these elements complement one another and form an artistic whole.

It will be a garden of art that welcomes exploration.

A ceremonial groundbreaking, accessible to the public as well as the invited donors, supporters, and community leaders, will take place November 7. That evening, the Chairman’s Club Dinner, an exclusive benefit for Chairman’s Club and Director’s Society members, will welcome Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works and Claire Agre of Unknown Studio for a formal discussion of the project and vision with Brady Roberts.