The Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum has been temporarily closed while the building undergoes major renovations, like renewing the air conditioning system and replacing the windows. Several of these updates are intended to improve storage and help maintain the museum’s art pieces.
Collections Manager and Registrar Faith Walker works on storing the art pieces within the museum, labeling them and making sure they remain in the best condition possible. Part of that upkeep involves a dedicated storeroom, newer window protections from the sun and newer systems within the museum to regulate temperature.
“[The windows] are nearly 50 years old, and over time, the seals around them break down and some of them have become very cloudy, but also they’re not as well insulated as modern windows,” Walker said. “That’s very important, both from an energy perspective, making sure that as much heat and as much AC as we’re generating stays in the building. But also, from my very nerdy perspective, it’ll be much easier to take care of the collection because the climate will be more stable.”
The structure of the museum is also undergoing renovations during this project, such as adding dedicated staff office spaces, expanding the entryway closer to the street and creating dedicated activity and classroom spaces as well.
“The more permanent exhibitions were in the back of the museum, and it made it challenging when we were rotating and changing out the temporary galleries, we had to close the museum because we didn’t want people walking through an installation to get to the permanent collections,” said Shaiman interim director and curator of the museum.
One of the biggest changes will be bringing the permanent collections to the front of the museum, that way the museum team won’t have to close everything when they are swapping out rotating galleries.
Several other changes focus on making the museum a much more accessible space for visitors, including the addition of family restrooms, an expanded entryway and altering the stair-step design of the museum’s auditorium for greater accessibility.
“Our auditorium has step seating, and that is really not very accommodating for those that might have mobility or accessibility needs,” Shaiman said. “All of the step seating is being torn out, and it’s all going to be one floor, and it’s going to offer greater accessibility for our space for lectures, events, programs and parties.”
Despite several classes at Miami working closely with the museum, official classroom spaces have not been part of the building until this renovation project. Museum employees like Walker are enthusiastic about the opportunity for more dedicated educational spaces, and the museum is looking to hire an education curator for the museum to head these educational and collaborative efforts.
“We do teach classes here at the museum, so there will be a more flexible classroom space,” Walker said. “We’ll be able to have more secure spaces where we can take items out into the classrooms and lay them out on tables, and students can view them.”
Staff and students will soon be able to also view the museum’s pieces through an online program called CatalogIt, a new software the museum is using to label and organize art pieces for easier record-keeping and visitor viewing.
“There’s a lot of stuff that people don’t even know what we have because our database doesn’t have that public feature,” said Walker. “You’ll be able to visually see what we have. I’m really taking this opportunity to rethink how my position does things: finding more efficient ways to manage records, manage view requests and organize stuff. This is really a reset.”
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The Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum is scheduled to reopen in fall 2027, with these new renovations creating a fresh experience for first-time and veteran visitors.
“You don’t want someone to interact with your space one time and feel like they’ve done it all,” said Fisher. “We want to continue to bring a new audience, bring a returning audience, by having really phenomenal pieces that we can be really proud of.”
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