Another Expansion for Speed Art Museum

Douglas P. Reed is one of the principals at Reed Hilderbrand Associates

The Massachusetts landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand Associates has been named part of the design team for a renovation and expansion of Louisville's Speed Art Museum. The announcement at the annual members' meeting Friday by museum director Charles Venable noted that Reed Hilderbrand, of Watertown, Mass., is currently working on the new Tyler (Texas) Museum of Art with Los Angeles-based wHY Architecture, the firm hired by the Speed in 2008 for the project, which should break ground in 2010.

Venable said the museum has some ''complicated issues'' associated with the project, including balancing a parklike setting with high pedestrian and automobile traffic at the adjacent University of Louisville campus and the way current museum buildings are ''almost completely sealed off visually from our grounds.''

Gary R. Hilderbrand is Reed's partner at the landscape architecture firm. Photos courtesy of Millicent Harvey.

The museum's building committee is led by Owsley Brown II, who said this is ''a once-in-a-generation opportunity'' to work on improving the museum's setting at a key crossroads of Louisville. The effort will involve the University of Louisville and Louisville Metro.

The designers on the project will be the firm's principals, Douglas P. Reed and Gary R. Hilderbrand, with associate John A. Kett. They have worked for other museums, including the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati; Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Phoenix Art Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.; Harvard University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Brandeis University.