Bowdoin Museum of Art Expansion: No 'Default to White'

A beautiful building. A challenging expansion project. Author James McCown says of this building that "no small building in New England so exquisitely epitomizes the Beaux-Arts style. It's exterior has not been changed since 1894, which definitely makes it a valuable campus heritage building. Of its expansion, McCown writes:

It is an eloquent refutation of one of the most dispiriting tendencies of the past few decades—what I call the "default to white." Faced with the daunting task of expanding a landmark building, many architects, fearful of offending some delicate sensibility, have sought refuge in a sort of Calvin Klein beige-and-white minimalism. 

Not so here.