renderings courtesy the metal museum
Rust Hall — named to honor longtime college president Ted Rust — was home to the Memphis College of Art from 1959 to 2020.
The metalworker’s craft is all around us. From doorknobs and handrails to zippers and fine jewelry, you can’t get through your day without encountering the fruits of a craftsperson’s labor. Metalwork’s ubiquity can obscure the exquisite skills of metallic manipulation acquired and refined by countless artisans over thousands of years. Only one museum in North America — and depending on your definition, maybe the world — celebrates the art of metalworking. And it’s right here in Memphis.
photograph courtesy the metal museum
Carissa Hussong, executive director of the Metal Museum.
“There’s a museum in France that’s mainly antique blacksmithing,” says Carissa Hussong, executive director of the Metal Museum. “There’s a gold museum in Taiwan, but it is looking at mining history, and another gold museum in Colombia. You have at least three major glass museums that have exhibitions and studios and residencies, but really there is no other institution like this.”
The National Ornamental Metal Museum, as it was originally called, was founded in the United States bicentennial month of July 1976, and opened its doors in 1979. The bluff overlooking the Mississippi River where the museum is currently situated is rich in history. It is believed to have been continuously inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years, and some historians believe this is where Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto first laid eyes on the river. Mark Twain is said to have proclaimed it the most beautiful view on the Mississippi. (“We can’t verify it, but we like that quote,” says Madison Miller, the museum’s director of development.) The buildings which house the Metal Museum’s gallery, foundry, blacksmith shop, and offices were once part of the U.S. government’s Marine Hospital, established on the bluff in 1881, and expanded during the New Deal era.
renderings courtesy the metal museum
The renovation will restore interior glass walls which were covered over to provide more gallery space for paintings.
Nowadays, the Metal Museum offers up to ten exhibitions a year covering all forms of fine metalwork. Their annual Repair Days, where members of the community bring in broken metal pieces to get patched up by the museum’s artisans, are consistently popular. They also run one of the few apprentice programs available for metalworking students.
The Metal Museum’s historic location has long been a blessing and a curse, says Hussong. Sure, the former tennis court turned event space overlooking the river has hosted many events, from weddings to WEVL’s annual Blues on the Bluff fundraiser, but even the youngest of the buildings is approaching its centennial, and there’s no room to grow.
“One of the things we don’t have right now is dedicated classroom space,” she says. “We’ve kind of done a makeshift space in the library, but it’s not ideal. And we have no place to teach anything that needs ventilation for fumes, so we don’t teach jewelry classes.”
“Also, we don’t have an elevator,” says Miller. “So everything that’s upstairs is walked up the stairs, which is not good for the art, and it’s not good for our staff.”
renderings courtesy the metal museum
Rust Hall — an appropriate name for a facility devoted to the art of metal- working — will greatly expand the Metal Museum’s available gallery space.
It’s also hard to reach. Metal Museum Drive is located just south of the old Memphis-Arkansas Bridge in what is known as the French Fort neighborhood. Miss an exit on Crump Boulevard or Riverside Drive, and you’ll end up trying to figure out how to get back from Arkansas. “The closest bus stop is a mile away, and if you’ve tried to drive down to the museum in the last couple months, it’s really difficult,” says Hussong. “There’s really only one way out at this point, with all the construction that they’re doing on I-55.”
Addressing these problems has long been an item on Hussong’s agenda. “I’ve been at the museum now over 15 years, and early on we did a campus study with [architectural firm] LRK. We did a big member patron survey, and of course, everyone said ‘more gallery space, more exhibitions, more classroom space.’”
“I think the city lucked out. This is a project that is transformative for the Metal Museum, but I think it’s also really important for helping preserve Overton Park, for keeping the legacy of arts and arts education in the park. I think it’s a perfect fit.” — Carissa Hussong
“The same architect who worked at Shelby Farms, Marlon Blackwell, developed two buildings that would’ve gone on the site,” says Hussong. “It would’ve completely changed the look and feel of the current location and cost a lot of money. Because we’re building on a bluff, there’s a lot of work that has to go into the ground to make sure that the buildings are stable. … It is a beautiful space. And really, the idea of altering it the way we needed would’ve been a big mistake.”
renderings courtesy the metal museum
A new cafe on the south face of the building will provide a terrace view of the park.
In May 2020, the last students graduated from the Memphis College of Art. The 84-year-old institution suffered the fate of many private American arts colleges, a victim of declining funding and enrollment. Rust Hall, which housed the college since 1959, was left empty. The building was designed by noted Memphis architect Roy Harrover. “It’s a fabulous piece of Mid-Century Modern architecture, there’s no doubt about that,” says Tony Pellicciotti, a principal architect with LRK.
Harrover was the architect behind other local landmarks, notably Memphis International Airport. Its distinctive martini glass-inspired design was foreshadowed by Rust Hall’s zig-zagging “folded plate” roof. “It’s not that common, but definitely a mid-century staple,” says Pellicciotti.
With the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art leaving its longtime home in the park for a new facility on Front Street, it looked like Overton Park would soon be without art institutions for the first time in a century. That is, until the Metal Museum announced it would move to Rust Hall.
“My initial reaction was, ‘No, we can’t leave the river, this is so much a part of who we are,’” says Hussong. “It took about two weeks for me to realize that we could keep the current location and do an artist-in-residency program [on the river bluff]. The current location is perfect for that. We wouldn’t have to change much. It would still have that kind of beautiful, quaint appeal. It can be off the beaten path.”
renderings courtesy the metal museum
The main building’s open design brought the natural beauty of Overton Park indoors.
In the heart of the city, Rust Hall is certainly not “off the beaten path.” It is easily accessible by bus, bike, or car, and it’s an easy walk to both the Memphis Zoo and the Overton Park Shell — a perfect location for a gallery looking for walk-in visitors. Drawing on the earlier utilization studies, Hussong commissioned Los Angeles-based wHY Architecture to redesign the former MCA campus. LRK came on board as the local architectural partner, and Ritchie Smith Associates designed the new landscaping.
“We enjoy the collaboration and different perspectives,” says LRK’s Krissy Flickinger, who will serve as the project manager. “We think that we’ve learned over time and come to appreciate that the more diverse inputs you have on a project, the more robust the solution ends up being.”
Flickinger, who lives nearby, says she was thrilled when the city gave the go-ahead. “My street is very invested in the project, and we met with a couple of different groups that were trying to be the new residents of Rust Hall,” she recalls. “It was always in the back of my mind, loving the idea of the Metal Museum. It just seemed to fit seamlessly with what it had been.”
The $25 million project, scheduled to open in 2025, will leave the most distinctive parts of Rust Hall intact, while removing a recent addition dating from the 1980s and revamping the rest. “We at LRK do a tremendous amount of historic preservation,” says Pellicciotti. “The Tennessee Brewery, Crosstown Concourse — Krissy’s been an integral part of all of those. The public tends to have emotional connections with historic buildings. There is that kind of affection in this community for Rust Hall.”
renderings courtesy the metal museum
The expanded facilities will enable both increased education opportunities for the community and an artist residency program.
Large glass panels in the main lobby space that were covered over to provide more wall space to display paintings will be restored, and the new additions will feature spacious courtyards to bring light inside the teaching spaces. “Harrover and the team that did that initial design, they focused on the quality of light. That was one of the primary drivers for why it is what it is,” says Flickinger.
The new Rust Hall will have considerably more gallery space than the Metal Museum’s blufftop facility, as well as improved and expanded spaces for artists and artisans to ply their craft. “Part of what we enjoy about the collaboration with the museum is they actually took us out there,” says Flickinger. “The artist helped us do metalworking, so that we have an appreciation for the tools they need and for the spaces they need. Because this is a museum, this is a classroom space, this is a lecture hall, but this is also a foundry that has working production of metal art as well as fine metals and all the different aspects of their trades.”
“I think the city lucked out,” says Hussong. “This is a project that is transformative for the Metal Museum, but I think it’s also really important for helping preserve Overton Park, for keeping the legacy of arts and arts education in the park. I think it’s a perfect fit.”
