Peninsula School of Art and Gallery - Youth Studio & Adult Studio Additions

Making Art Visible

The Peninsula School of Art is a small, hidden-away art school in Door County, Wisconsin. With a need to expand and increase their visibility, local artists found a way to allow the school to affordably acquire the large adjacent property to the north which fronted on the Bayshore Highway along which all Door County travel flows.

The clients asked for a 40-year master plan showing how the art school could grow out to the new north property and gain critical visibility on the adjacent Coastal Highway there. They asked for a new major open space that would allow them to hold Plein Air Art Festival events on their campus. They also asked for a new Youth Studio Wing to art to public school students in a region where art had been essentially dropped from the curriculum. The school also wanted a series of new adult studios for both 2D and 3D art, arranged such that they could add them over time as need and resources allowed. Also needed was a future Digital Art Wing and various renovations to the existing building.

Thoughtful additions to a 1980’s building and an events lawn was brushed out of a long-dead orchard on the new north property, opening the school to Bayshore Highway visibility for the first time while maintaining all native hardwood trees, established an art school campus.