An effort to save a beloved part of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego scheduled to undergo a major makeover next month has garnered international support from architects and historians.
The La Jolla museum, which first opened in 1941, will be expanded to about twice its current size, according to David C. Copley Director Kathryn Kanjo, a spokesperson for the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The expansion would allow for four-times as many galleries within the museum but a group of architects from across the globe takes issue with what will be lost in the transformation.
"We're really trying to help. We're not trying to stop the expansion. We know it's very crucial for the museum to grow," said Harvard University architecture student Yaxuan Liu.
Liu and about 90 others, many architects and historians and some from out of the country, have signed a petition to stop the museum from destroying their entryway, designed by well-known post-modern architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.
The museum plans to move the museum's entrance to the south side of the building, and the columns and the remaining pergolas that have greeted visitors since 1996, will be removed.
Kanjo said that the renovations and expansions are being done with the 75-year-old museum and its guests in mind.
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"The architects are really rebalancing the building as a whole. They're thinking about the audience; they're trying to clarify the entry sequence and the way we move through the building, " Kanjo said. "I think they're doing it while paying respect to our architectural lineage."
Selldorf Architects was selected in 2014 to complete the expansion project before it was unanimously approved by the La Jolla Community Planning Commission, the San Diego City Planning Commission and the California Coastal Commission, Kanjo said.
Kanjo thinks the recent outpouring of criticism is strange since the plan has been in the works for more than four years.
The 1994 renovation by Venturi Scott Brown and Associates was one of several. Mosher and Drew completed a series of expansions in 1950, 1960 and 1970, according to the Museum of Contemporary Art's website.
While groundbreaking on the most recent project is set to begin in October, some of the columns have already been removed and relocated to the La Jolla Historical Society. But Liu said there is still time for the museum to save the entryway.
"I think there's always time to improve the design and I think it's always better to do it correctly than to do it fast, " he said.
