DeCordova Announces a New Visitor Station Designed by Artist/Architect Wellington Reiter

LINCOLN, MA—DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the leading museum of contemporary American art in New England, plans to unveil a new Visitor Station in mid-summer as the next phase of its $10 million capital campaign to transform itself into a fully integrated 35-acre campus of visual arts programming. To date, roughly half of the $10 million goal has been raised.

The vision behind the Visitor Station—designed by artist/architect Wellington Reiter of Newton-based Urban Instruments, Inc.—provides a first point of orientation for DeCordova visitors. The goal is to enhance the quality of the experience at DeCordova by welcoming and informing visitors how to access the many different programs and activities. The structure—a 60-foot long crescent completely sheathed in an aluminum skin—features a glass interior space for an attendant, constituting an entry pavilion that is part architecture, part sculpture, and part infrastructure

"As the majority of DeCordova's exhibition space lies outdoors in the Sculpture Park, the true entrance to the campus is not the front door of the Museum building, but rather the roadway into the Park," says DeCordova Museum Director Paul Master-Karnik. "Wellington Reiter and Urban Instruments have provided a uniquely creative and beautiful solution to the challenge of designing an 'entry experience' for the DeCordova Sculpture Park. Their Visitor Station literally transforms the campus with a new and vital sense of presence: a brilliant hybrid of contemporary sculpture and high-tech orientation facility that integrates itself into a landscape populated with large-scale sculpture."

Hours of Operation

Once the Visitor Station becomes operational some time in July, it will also serve as the service point for the collection of admission fees, a transaction currently handled inside the Museum building. Significantly, the hours of operation of the Visitor Station coincide precisely with those of the indoor gallery exhibitions: Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm. Outside of those hours—before 11 am, after 5 pm, and all day Monday—visitors will continue to enjoy free access to the parking lot and grounds. Patrons interested in visiting only The Store @ DeCordova will not be required to pay admission.

Situation of the Visitor Station

The Visitor Station is located inside the Park at a bend in the entry drive 1/10 mile up from Sandy Pond Road. During special program and event periods that are start-time specific, the Visitor Station will not be open, and vehicles will not be stopped. Admissions processing (if any) in these instances will take place at other sites on the DeCordova campus, e.g., the Museum lobby. Importantly as well, there will be a DeCordova security presence highly visible on the grounds, dispensing information and assistance to visitors after they have passed through the new entrance point.

About Wellington Reiter, Architect of DeCordova's Visitor Station

Wellington Reiter is currently the Dean of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State University. Previous to this appointment, he was a member of the faculty in the Department of Architecture at MIT from 1990 to 2003 and the Professional Advisor to the Career Discovery Program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard and the Rhode Island School of Design. Dean Reiter was trained at Tulane University's School of Architecture, North London Polytechnic, and Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

The work of Dean Reiter ranges from built works to museum installations and drawings. Urban Instruments, Inc.—his professional practice arm of which he is the principal—includes many projects that bridge the disciplines of architecture, urban design, public art, and landscape architecture. His most recent commission is a monument to the Wright Brothers in Raleigh, North Carolina. His drawings of speculative urban conditions are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, San Francisco MOMA, and the Boston Athenaeum and have been published widely throughout the U.S. and Europe. Vessels and Fields, a monograph on the work of Dean Reiter, is available from Princeton Architectural Press.

Dean Reiter and his Urban Instruments office are the recipients of numerous awards including multiple American Institute of Architects Honor Awards for Urban Design, several Boston Society of Architects Awards for Interior Architecture, a BSA/AIA New York Urban Design Honor Award, the PA Young Architects citation, The Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, the Kepes Prize for interdisciplinary design from MIT, the James Marsten Fitch Foundation Fellowship, and four awards from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

General Information

DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park is a museum of modern and contemporary American art with a particular emphasis on the work of New England artists. It features the only public sculpture park of its kind in New England and the largest non-degree granting studio art program in the state. DeCordova opened in 1950 on the former estate of Julian de Cordova, a Boston entrepreneur and art collector.

DeCordova Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm and on selected Monday holidays. Admission is $6 per person, $4 for senior citizens, students, and youth ages 6–12. Children age 5 and under, Lincoln residents, and Active Duty Military Personnel and their dependents are admitted free. The Sculpture Park is open year round during daylight hours. The Store @ DeCordova and the School Gallery are open Monday through Thursday, 9:30 am to 7:30 pm, Friday through Saturday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, and Sunday 11:30 am to 5:30 pm. The Café @ DeCordova is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 am to 3 pm. Free guided public tours of the Museum's main galleries take place every Thursday at 1 and Sunday at 2 pm. Free tours of the Sculpture Park are given on Saturday and Sunday at 1 pm from May to October. Visit www.decordova.org or call 781/259-8355 for further information.

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