A Richard Serra sculpture is coming to the Glenstone Museum, and today it has a new home.

The 15-year-old private collection has announced plans for a new dedicated 4,000-square-foot space that will house a forthcoming installation by the artist on its 230-acre location in suburban Maryland next year. 

Thomas Phifer and Partners worked with Serra on plans for the new building that updates the museum’s original intent to have its collection displayed in an elevated way via separate individual viewing spaces that serve as guideposts on a journey undertaken by visitors navigating a central trail. The paneled envelope of the structure looms out of the wilderness upon approach, precast concrete and landscape combine to give the impression of a rock formation or bunker to onlookers who enter the structure through a single centered doorway. 

“Creating another building for Glenstone’s extraordinary landscape while working with Richard Serra, without question one of the greatest artists of our time, is the honor of a lifetime,” Phifer said in a statement. “I hope when people come upon this experience they will find it surprising, powerful, and deeply moving.”

The firm had previously been tapped for the design of the Glenstone’s 11-building Pavilions expansion, which was completed at the end of 2018 at a cost of $200 million. A pair of site-specific works by the artist, Sylvester (2001) and Contour 290 (2004), already feature prominently on the museum’s Montgomery County campus thanks to a close relationship between Serra and the museum’s founders Emily and Mitchell Rales.

California-based firm PWP was responsible for the landscape design of the project, also continuing its own longtime relationship with the museum via designer Adam Greenspan.

The Glenstone did not provide any details of Serra’s new sculpture though it did set an anticipated opening date for the spring or early summer of 2022.