The Staten Island Museum (also known as the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences) was founded in 1881, and is the island’s oldest cultural institution and the only remaining general interest museum in New York City. The new Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor is located in Building A, one of five 19th-century Greek Revival buildings in an 83-acre park that has been designated a National Historic Landmark District.

In collaboration with the Staten Island Museum’s staff and curators, we master-planned four exhibition spaces, designed the Biodiversity and Treasure Box Galleries, and created the museum’s wayfinding and exterior signage.

The goal of the project was to display collections never seen by the public, and for visitors to explore the richness of Staten Island from a natural history and fine art point of view. In addition, the museum’s aim was to become a community destination and a resource, and expand its educational and “off-island” visitorship.

From the design perspective, what made this project unique was that the renovation inserted a 21st-century museum within the walls of a 19th-century building, while keeping intact many original features (windows, staircases, flooring, and decorative details).

The design challenge was to respect the building by providing design interventions that were minimalistic and elegantly organic. The design cues were taken from the building itself, which had been sensitively renovated by Gluckman Mayner Architects. Originally a dormitory for retired merchant seamen, the rooms are domestically scaled. Seeking to preserve that intimacy, walls and cases were positioned to allow natural light into the galleries while providing visitors with multiple park views from the building’s many windows. Casework is clean-lined so as to focus primarily on the objects and specimens. Interpretive text was subtly integrated into the casework so as not to distract from the collection on display.

Exhibitry and interior wayfinding use a minimalist design vocabulary that acts as a counterpoint to the more ornately detailed mid-19th-century interior architecture. All public spaces are white, while each gallery is painted a different subdued color selected to complement the collections on display.

The Biodiversity exhibition in the Lobby is the setting for the museum’s premier natural history collections. This exhibit also acts as a preview for Building B next door, which will become the future home of the science branch of the museum. A set of flexible cases and wall exhibits were designed to showcase more than 500 specimens. The Treasure Box Gallery displays, for the first time, more than 300 objects from around the world, collected and donated to the museum by Staten Islanders in the early 20th century. A large, freestanding walk-around case–the Treasure Box case–is filled with objects from the European, Native American, South American, African, and Asian Arts collections, as well as the personal stories of Staten Island collectors. The case was designed to be flexible, so that objects of many sizes could be accommodated and artifacts and text panels easily changed.

Since opening in September of 2015 at their new venue, The Staten Island Museum has increased their visitorship primarily on weekends. This increase is in mixed-age family groups, a demographic the Museum has targeted. The Museum has become a cultural destination that has also helped increase visitorship throughout the Snug Harbor complex. General feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and membership and donations have increased. The Museum feels that the new exhibits have particularly benefited their school group programming especially in content areas of Biodiversity and historic Staten Island subjects. They have also commented that the new facility has made school group visits more easily managed with the support services put in place as part of the Museum's public programming upgrades and amenities.