Dublin City Council has managed to double the size of the old Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Art on Parnell Square for less than half the cost of the National Gallery's Millennium Wing in Clare Street, it was revealed yesterday.
The €13 million extension, due to open on May 4th, contains 13 new galleries to complement the existing 13 in Charlemont House, which has been the home of "The Municipal" since 1933.
Its name is also being changed to "Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane".
The gallery, which has been closed since last October to facilitate the project, is having its permanent collection rehung. It will be augmented by nine Seán Scully paintings, eight of them donated by the artist himself, and six unfinished paintings by Francis Bacon.
The Scully collection is being hung in its own spacious gallery, which the Inchicore-born artist - regarded as the most important abstract painter of his generation - had an input in designing as part of the overall project by Dublin architects Gilroy McMahon.
"He decided the length, breadth and height of the space virtually to within a millimetre," said Des McMahon, who met Scully in New York, where he is based. Gallery director Barbara Dawson believes it will become one of the major draws of the new gallery.
Mr McMahon, whose major project was the re-creation of Croke Park, suggested on a preview tour yesterday that an art gallery was "a halfway house between a supermarket and a temple . . . more Feargal Quinn than Frank Lloyd Wright".
It was "not just for looking at things, but all about engagement with works of art", which he defined as "a spiritual type of experience, almost sacred".
At the same time, however, it had to provide a bookshop and a restaurant/cafe for patrons.
Unlike other architects such as Frank Gehry, with his all-singing, all-dancing Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Mr McMahon set out to ensure that the new extension to the Hugh Lane would be as neutral as possible, providing a background for the art.
The emphasis is on circulation. There are no corridors, but rather a sequence of rooms. All of the new spaces have white walls and oak floors, with rooflights to let in the maximum amount of daylight. They also connect with the existing galleries at every level.
The extension has been installed on a tight site previously occupied by the National Ballroom, at the rear of two listed Georgian houses on the north side of Parnell Square, just east of Charlemont House (1765) and the galleries that occupy its once-extensive garden.
Its only external manifestation is a contemporary glazed screen beside Lord Charlemont's neo-classical town house, which the architect saw as "the only opportunity we had to advertise what's going on in here". There are great views over the city from inside.
Behind the screen is a staircase leading to the upper floors and two lifts, one to serve the gallery and the other the two houses next door.
The main staircase of the new wing is farther back, with low-level windows offering glimpses of their rear elevations.
The fate of the two houses is still uncertain, as Dublin City Council's budget was not sufficient for their restoration, and previous attempts to dispose of them came to naught. Ironically, uncertainty also hangs over the Georgian house beside the National Gallery.
A water garden is being installed in a small triangular courtyard to the rear of the two houses - inspired by "the reflection of the sky in a boghole in Connemara", according to Des McMahon. The gallery's new basement restaurant/cafe will open on to it.
The main staircase is top-lit and flooded by daylight, even on a dull day.
Altogether, the extension has added 2,000 sq m (21,530 sq ft) of space to the Hugh Lane.