Down by the River

edited by Sheila Kim-Jamet -- Interior Design, 7/1/2005 12:00:00 AM

It's taken three years. Now the Figge Art Museum (formerly the Davenport Museum of Art) will open in a new modern building on the banks of the Mississippi River in Davenport, Iowa, on August 6.

Architect David Chipperfield, whose resume includes the Shore Club in Miami, stores for Dolce & Gabbana, and two other museums in Japan and England, designed the 100,000-square-foot volume. Its sleek monolithic skin of opaque, transparent, and translucent glass houses permanent and special galleries, five classrooms, an auditorium, a library, a winter garden, and a restaurant. There's also an outdoor sculpture garden. The inaugural exhibition, "The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915– 1935," starts September 17. 563-326-7804; art-dma.org.