By the early 1970s, Mia was getting claustrophobic. It hadn’t built any new galleries since the 1920s, and, like so much of the ’70s, was suffocating from excess. Witness the wallpaper.
Laying down the groove at the 1972 groundbreaking ceremony for Mia’s addition.
This photo was taken in March 1972 at the groundbreaking of the museum’s new expansion, which would open in fall 1974. A minimalist addition designed by the famed mid-century modernist architect Kenzo Tange, it would prompt a clearing of cobwebs and add some jet-age streamlining to complement Mia’s original 1915 building.
The bust behind the young visitors has itself undergone some revisionism. Acquired for a modest sum in 1958, the unsigned portrait of Pope Clement X, circa 1668, was long attributed to a little-known student of the great sculptor—some say the greatest—Gian Lorenzo Bernini. And then, in a surprise announcement by an Italian scholar in 2000, it was tenuously attributed to Bernini himself.
The bust was taken out of the shadows. Attendance jumped. “A lot of people who may have never come to the museum are coming just to see something which could be so extraordinary,” said Evan Maurer, then the director of Mia. It didn’t last. The attribution could never be proved, though the technology now exists to conduct alloy testing on all known bronzes associated with Bernini and see where this one stacks up. For now, it’s in gallery G310, labeled “Circle of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.”