SO – IL \ WCMA: Building a New Museum

After years of thoughtful planning, the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) and Williams have partnered with SO – IL, an internationally-recognized architecture and design firm based in Brooklyn, New York, to create a new, state-of-the-art building as the museum’s first purpose-built home since it opened here in Lawrence Hall in 1926 in what had previously been the college’s library. The design process for the new WCMA began in June 2022 and has been an exciting, collaborative journey between the design team, the museum, and the college.

Organized jointly by the design team and the museum, this exhibition showcases plans and renderings of the building design. It also offers a view into our work in progress and the fluid and iterative process helped us get to where we are today. Our hope is that this provides a sense of what goes into the design of a complex and ambitious building, and provides an opportunity for our communities to learn and think together about what it means to make a campus art museum for the future.

WCMA and SO – IL have benefited tremendously from working in partnership with executive architects Perry Dean Rogers, landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand, and the members of the Williams College Campus Building Committee who served as advisors and ambassadors for the project.