Anchorage Daily News

The glass and metallic-striped Anchorage Museum addition, opening today, looks like it belongs in a fancier place, like Sydney or Manhattan. But, no, it's ours.

And while finishing touches are yet to come, it's already clear that the $106 million addition is one of Anchorage's finest treasures.

One jarring element is how the beige brick design of the old building meets up with the shiny, modernistic new section.

"To continue with the brick building didn't make sense," said Daphne Brown of Kumin Associates, the local architecture firm that carried out the design by British architect David Chipperfield. The goal was to create a new front entrance that opened to the center of downtown.

The best new things in the museum:

• The glass facade, plaza and commons facing downtown. The old, more modest, museum entrance is on Seventh Avenue. The new front entrance on C Street makes a bigger splash. The facade is itself a thing of beauty reflecting the cityscape. The birch forest to be created on two acres in front of the building sounds intriguing.

• The third floor, which is designed to handle traveling shows with strict requirements, like the multi-million dollar "Gold" exhibit from the American Museum of Natural History in New York that is on display now. Without the state-of-the art electronic security in the addition, the show -- "one of the top 10 shows in the world," according to museum director James Pepper Henry -- couldn't have come to Anchorage, said Pepper Henry.

"Gold" features ancient jewelry and coins such as pre-Columbian jewelry, bounty from sunken Spanish galleons, gold bars and nuggets. Until now Alaskans would have had to travel Outside to places like Seattle or Denver to see such an exhibit.

• The room right off the lobby that holds the Alaska archives. The Bob and Evangeline Atwood Alaska Resource Center contains more than 12,000 documents and 500,000 historical Alaska photos. In the past they were tucked away. This room, with work space for visitors and shelves of materials that move at the press of a button, makes the trove of Alaska history much more accessible.

• The new gift shop featuring Alaska Native artwork, with a section for each of the state's Native cultures.

In 2010, the museum will incorporate an expanded version of the Imaginarium science museum for children. It will also acquire a display of Alaska Native artifacts from the Smithsonian, which will loan them to the Anchorage Museum for seven years. A gallery has already been set aside for the artifacts.

How was the city, which owns the museum, able to pull off such a significant expansion?

It started with a $50 million gift from the late Anchorage banker Elmer Rasmuson. The state and federal governments, individuals and foundations gave the rest. City taxpayers in 2005 approved spending an additional $1.25 million per year to help pay annual operating costs.

Anchorage residents got a world-class museum out of the deal.

BOTTOM LINE: Go check out the new part of the museum. It's spectacular, and it's yours.

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