Bend, Oregon’s High Desert Museum collapses the art, history, and natural science of the region into its displays. The institution opened in 1982 and was last expanded in 1989. Its programming has doubled and attendance has grown by 40 percent since 2011, warranting a $40 million expansion now underway by Hacker Architects.
Construction broke ground this week on the new wing, which measures 24,000 square feet.
The addition by Hacker Architects will be attached to the High Desert Museum’s main building and expand the institution’s exhibitions, education programming, and community engagement capacities with new classrooms, event, and gallery spaces.
Architecturally, the design takes cues from the landscape, dotted with yellow sagebushes and towering river canyons. Museumgoers will enjoy a new 2,775-square-foot gallery walk for encountering art inspired by nature.
The context will be reflected in the wing’s floor-to-ceiling windows, open gathering areas, and nature-based color palette that “reinforces the museum’s commitment to place-based storytelling.”
The first thing visitors will experience approaching the wing is its staggered, single-pitched roof profile. In plan, volumes made of stone and wood jut out, creating dynamic shadow lines.
Renderings show the interiors washed in natural light, and wood surfaces lining the walls and ceilings. The galleries will be generously proportioned and coated in white paint.
The museum’s permanent collection of approximately 7,000 Indigenous plateau objects is one of the most important collections of its kind in the country, the museum affirmed.
Hacker Architects was tasked with renovating and reinstalling the High Desert Museum’s Doris Swayze Bounds collection of objects from the Indigenous plateau region.
Dana Whitelaw, High Desert Museum executive director, said, “The transformed campus will deepen our ability to evolve alongside the diverse audiences we serve and to reinforce the Museum’s integral role in our community as a leading cultural, educational, and civic institution.”
The new wing will open to the public in 2027.
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