Nearly three years after it was commissioned, the Master Site Plan for the new Museum of Fine Arts is here. Designed by international bigwigs Foster and Partners (headed by Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster), and unveiled at a press conference on Thursday, February 14, the "new" MFA calls for the demolition of the old East Wing (now housing American & European Decorative Arts and Sculpture) and the building of a new one on the same site; refurbished European art galleries; expanded research and conservation facilities; a new restaurant overlooking the Fens; a new state-of-the-art film theater; expanded exhibition space; and eventual expansion of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA). But the most audacious part of the plan calls for the enclosure of the museum’s two courtyards in glass "jewel boxes," as well as the eventual construction of a "crystal spine" of glass and steel that will run the length of the museum from east to west.

As the MFA plant has evolved since the inception of architect Guy Lowell’s master site plan of 1907, it’s become a disparate complex of isolated wings and galleries. At the press conference on Thursday, MFA director Malcolm Rogers pointed out that the current East Wing is the least visited part of the museum. (It also lacks a climate-control system.) What’s more, the circular traffic patterns of the current museum, with its rotundas at each end of the central north-south axis (Fenway/Huntington), tend to land uninitiated visitors in front of the same Monet haystacks (as if out of some Nabokovian nightmare).

The elegance of Foster’s "crystal spine" — aside from its physical beauty and the abundance of light it will bring to the building — resides in how it will unite the parts of the museum with a central boulevard that provides access to all major exhibition spaces. The "jewel box" of the Helen Fraser Garden Court will be a centralized gathering place that includes a new information center. Glass pavilions in the new East Wing will also open the imposing neoclassical façade, making the inside of the museum visible from the street.

At the press conference, Rogers, Foster, and Foster partner Spencer de Grey emphasized that the plan was designed as a link between past and future, and that the current plan uses as its template the strong east-west/north-south axes of the Lowell design. What’s more, the plan helps make amends for some of the problems the MFA has had with the surrounding neighborhood. From 1990 to 1995, in a cost-cutting measure, the former main entrance of the Museum on Huntington Avenue was closed in favor of the I.M. Pei–designed West Wing entrance — literally closing the door to the South End neighborhoods on the other side of Huntington. (One needs no better example of a white institution shutting itself off from a black constituency.) The north entrance overlooking the Fens has been closed since 1975. As part of the new plan, each wing will have its own active entrance, allowing access from all sides.

Foster says he also wanted to reinforce the museum’s connection to the surrounding neighborhoods and city at large by reinforcing the link with the "Emerald Necklace" of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, of which the Fens is a part. Thus, the landscaping of the Fens will be echoed with new plantings and landscaping on the north/Fens side of the building. The motif will extend through the new "jewel box" courtyards with plantings and reflecting pools and then out to the Huntington Avenue side to (with the cooperation of the city) a line of new trees along Huntington’s T line.

At the press conference, Rogers conceded that a city now consumed by the Big Dig might not be immediately amenable to refurbishing the street that, at his instigation, has been named the "Avenue of the Arts," but he said that he hoped the Master Site Plan will "create a greater sense of political inevitability."

Of course, some will decry the museum’s enclosing of formerly open space (its two courtyards) and others might wonder how the museum will raise the money for the initial four years of construction that will ensue once ground is broken (probably in March 2003). Rogers said he wanted to "disengage" the details of fundraising from discussion of the new design, but the MFA’s press material outlines a $425 million campaign that dwarfs the 1998 campaign that raised $137 million. Fundraising, Rogers said, "is advancing and is on target," and he argued that the post–September 11 decline in philanthropy had not affected museums. Rogers, Foster, and de Grey also insisted that work can be completed without disrupting the museum’s ongoing activities.

As for the courtyards, given the schematic illustrations and the scale model at the press conference, the new plan looks to bring the outside in. Rather than close open spaces, the new design brings more light, more space, and more access to areas that were once accessible only part of the year, and only through entrances at a lower level.