Architecture Tour of Kleefeld Contemporary expansion and conservation highlights

Discover the newly expanded Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum of Cal State Long Beach on this exclusive tour with Kim McCarron, AIA, LEED AP and Associate at Pfeiffer—A Perkins Eastman Studio! The Museum completed the exciting renovation and expansion from 2020 to 2022 and opened to the public this February. At 11,000 square feet, the new redesigned Museum introduces new attractions and features, including several new galleries and public spaces. Completely transformed, the Museum can better serve visitors with more accessible upgraded facilities, inclusive policies, and multi-use spaces that make the only free museum in Long Beach welcoming for everyone.

The tour also highlights the recent conservation of a Millard Sheets mosaic saved from the wrecking ball by a preservation project led by the Museum and supported by Farmers and Merchants Bank of Long Beach. The original work, constructed from 1975 to 1977, was in installed inside the Lakewood Home Savings Bank, and was relocated and conserved by RLA Conservation in consultation with an original member of Millard Sheets’ studio, Brian Worley. Composed of over 100,000 tesserae smalti glass tiles, the work weighs in at over two tons and had to be cut into ten segments to be dissembled and re-installed on-site near the Museum’s Horn Center entrance.

During the transformation, Museum leadership worked with Pfeiffer and Clark Construction Group to improve the Museum with more functionality, sustainability, and beauty to behold inside and out. Sustainable design choices upgraded the museum to a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver building rating.  All renovated spaces—from the new Constance W. Glenn Court, Community Gallery and museum store to the Education Laboratory, Archives Room, and Prints and Drawings Room—offer visitors opportunities to interface with contemporary art. Freshly landscaped sculpture gardens beautify a Public Art Park, and with several new accessible exhibition spaces, the Museum is established as a true event center. A broadened landscape with native and water-wise plant gardens adorns a refreshed Patron’s Plaza.

Museum Mission: We are a community of people who examine, critique, and create contemporary art and culture. We rethink what museums do and work to define the current moment together by investing in new cutting-edge facilities, visual abstraction, material innovation, and arts integration through the practices of artists of difference. The Museum invites everyone to explore, shop, and learn in their new expanded spaces. More information: csulb.edu/museum