Peabody Essex Museum, Salem
About Peabody Essex Museum
History
2000s–2010s
In 2003, the museum completed a massive $100 million renovation and expansion resulting in the Peabody Essex Museum opening a new wing designed by Moshe Safdie, more than doubling the gallery space to 250,000 square feet (23,000 m²); this allowed the display of many items from its extensive holdings, which had previously been unknown to the public due to lack of capability to show them. At this time, the museum also opened to the public the Yin Yu Tang House, an early 19th-century Chinese house from Anhui Province that had been disassembled in its original village and reconstructed in Salem.In 2011, the Peabody Essex Museum announced it had raised $550 million, with plans to raise an additional $100 million by 2016. The Boston Globe reported this was the largest capital campaign in the museum's history, vaulting the Peabody Essex into the top tier of major art museums. The PEM trustee co-chairs Sam Byrne and Sean Healey with board president Robert Shapiro led the campaign.$200 to $250 million will fund the museum’s 175,000-square-foot (16,300 m2) expansion bringing the total square footage to 425,000 square feet (39,500 m2).In May 2012, the PEM confirmed that its expansion will not be finished until 2019, due to the unexpected death of museum architect Rick Mather in April 2012 and the search for his replacement.To replace architect Rick Mather, the firm of Ennead Architects was chosen after successfully completing the first phase of the building project, which included master planning and the renovation of the museum's Dodge wing, scheduled to open in November 2013. On September 28, 2019 the museum opened a new 40,000-square-foot wing, designed by Ennead Architects of New York, adjacent to East India Marine Hall. This addition included 15,000 square feet of Class A galleries as well as a 5,000-square-foot-garden designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.