A new gateway to the University of Notre Dame continues the University’s long legacy of commitment to the arts. Welcoming visitors from across the country, the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art opens its doors to the public Friday (Dec. 1).

The new 70,000-square-foot building on the northeast corner of Eddy Street and Angela Boulevard is designed by the award-winning firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA). Recognized as a leader in classical-inspired architecture, RAMSA has designed an expanded home for the University’s robust art collections that honors both tradition and innovation. The building’s brick, cast stone and Indiana limestone exterior blends with other historic buildings on campus. The new museum, occupying a prominent intersection where the University’s campus meets the greater community, will anchor and function as a gateway to an expanding on-campus arts district.

Inside, the museum’s 23 historically thematic galleries unfold around a multilevel atrium that rises to a central skylight. Classical yet contemporary, the light-flooded atrium greets visitors with works from the Raclin Murphy collection and orients them to the building’s upper and lower floors, connected by two grand staircases. A bookstore is nestled in the central atrium alongside Ivan’s Cafe, named for the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who taught and worked at Notre Dame from 1955 until his death in 1962.

“Since its founding, Notre Dame has valued the vital role the visual arts play as an expression of human creativity, religious experience and insight into the human condition,” said University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. “By bringing the collections currently in the Snite Museum of Art to new life in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, we will be able to share these treasures in all their richness with our University community, our neighbors in the region and the wider world.”

In addition to education spaces, a teaching gallery, an object study center and a chapel, the state-of-the-art galleries serve as a dramatic backdrop to works from the University’s art collection, which encompasses more than 30,000 objects. With origins that date to 1875, the collection has grown into one of the most significant and extensive collections of any academic museum in the country, with works representing many of the principal cultures and periods of world art history. The museum’s paintings, sculptures, ceramics, prints, drawings, textiles, baskets and decorative arts offer visitors a broad view of global proportions.

“The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art makes an essential contribution to Notre Dame’s strategy as a global Catholic research university for the 21st century,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost of Notre Dame. “The stunning exhibition spaces and the luminous works of art they contain will captivate us with their beauty, spark important conversations in the classroom and beyond and enable us to think in new ways about our past, present and future.”

“The permanent collection, which will celebrate its sesquicentennial in 2025, has been reinstalled with new life and vigor, giving visitors the opportunity to reconnect with and experience cherished artworks from a new perspective,” said Joseph Antenucci Becherer, director of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.

“Our search for knowledge is endless. It joins earth and sky.”

Newly commissioned works by globally renowned artists are integrated into the fabric of the building design, beginning with “Endless,” a 36-foot stainless steel sculpture by Jaume Plensa positioned outside of the museum entrance. Reflecting on his visits to the University and its mission, the artist noted, “Our search for knowledge is endless. It joins earth and sky.” The work of art features alphabets in eight languages and symbolizes Notre Dame’s commitment to diversity, internationalization, knowledge and global service.

A monumental carved text panel on the front facade of the building reads, “We are in the midst of reality responding with joy.” The meaningful work of art by Jenny Holzer welcomes visitors to the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and sets the tone for the renewed spaces inside, merging tradition and innovation in an effort to resonate with audiences from around the world.

Stepping into the atrium will reveal a circular terrazzo and bronze floor installation by Kiki Smith. “Sea of Stars,” one of the artist’s largest public projects to date, features 39 hand-drawn and cast stars inspired by celestial images frequently seen in medieval, Renaissance and Byzantine depictions of the Madonna as protectress and “Star of the Sea.” Also prominently mounted in the atrium is Maya Lin’s “St. Joseph (River) Watershed,” a reflection on our shared natural environment. The expansive relief with shimmering recycled silver honors the region’s Indigenous people and celebrates the unique geographic, sociological and environmental elements of the St. Joseph River and watershed.

Mimmo Paladino’s artistry adorns the museum’s Mary, Queen of Families chapel, a sacred space for contemplation and Masses. Paladino’s stained-glass window, incised wall frescoes and mosaic artwork on the ceiling are the result of extensive research of the University of Notre Dame, the Congregation of Holy Cross, Marian iconography and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The large-scale commission will complement the medieval and Renaissance altarpieces in the chapel, offering a unique curatorial opportunity to consider the link between art history and the history of the Catholic Church.

The Raclin Murphy Museum will also unveil new acquisitions by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Zhang Huan, Dietrich Klinge, Julie Mehretu, David Ocelotl Garcia, Jamie Okuma, Yinka Shonibare, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Dana Warrington, Jason Wesaw and others. The recent acquisitions and newly commissioned art will elevate the museum’s holdings of global works and complement objects from the permanent collection, many of which underwent conservation or professional cleaning before being moved to the new building.

Located in the 9-acre Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park, the museum’s location allows for the continued growth of its outdoor sculpture collection. The park installation will feature new acquisitions by Sir Anthony Caro, Dietrich Klinge, Clement Meadmore, Louise Nevelson, Beverly Pepper and Ursula von Rydingsvard among others and provide a new environment for works by Deborah Butterfield, Peter Randall-Page and George Rickey. The park’s landscape architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh, was retained for the horticultural design.

“Designed for both education and enjoyment, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is a place where campus and community can experience the richness of Notre Dame’s art and sculpture collections together,” said Melissa DelVecchio, partner at RAMSA.

The newly opened Raclin Murphy building is dedicated to exhibition and educational spaces. The larger vision for the museum includes additional galleries and spaces for teaching, a works-on-paper study center, administrative and curatorial offices and open collections storage. The timeline for these additional elements is to be determined.

“Along with my dedicated colleagues, we say welcome to what is and what can be. Nurturing an ongoing culture of learning through art, we’ve realized this new space to bring the campus and national community together. We have built a building and filled its spaces, but only together can we give the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art the soul it merits,” Becherer said.

The late Ernestine Raclin and her daughter and son-in-law Carmen and Chris Murphy are the lead benefactors of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. Admission to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is free. For more information, visit raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu.

In 16th-century Tlatelolco, today part of Mexico City, a Spanish cleric and a small group of Indigenous elders, authors and artists created a manuscript documenting their rapidly changing world. As plague ravaged the population, these scholars, scribes and painters composed a document illustrated with some 2,500 images – what has been described as the first encyclopedia in the Americas. The manuscript, known as the Florentine Codex, documented Mexica culture and the Aztec Empire in brilliant detail, as well as the devastation that followed the Spanish invasion of Mexico in 1519, including the introduction of diseases to which the native population had little resistance.

The impetus for the project was practical: as part of their evangelization campaigns, Spanish mendicant friars needed to know the beliefs and traditions of the Nahua-speaking communities they hoped to convert to Catholicism. In the 1570s, the Franciscan friar Bernadino de Sahagún, in collaboration with a group of Nahua speakers including Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino and others whose names are unknown to us created something far more expansive.

The Tlatelolcan warrior Tzilcatzin throwing stones at the invading Spaniards in Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (1577), Alonso Vegerano. Photo: courtesy the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and MiBACT

Following the model of European encyclopedias, especially Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, the codex is composed of twelve books with parallel texts in Nahuatl and Spanish recording the gods, ritual calendar, natural history, philosophy and other subjects of New Spain, including the events of the invasion itself. The manuscript, known as the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España (The Universal History of the Things of New Spain), resides in the Laurentian Library in Florence, but it is the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles that has unlocked the wonders of this remarkable work. The newly unveiled Digital Florentine Codex reveals the magisterial scope of the endeavour. With a user-friendly interface, trilingual texts (Spanish, Nahuatl and English) and superb, high-resolution images, a reader can search for specific topics with ease.

Feather worker (amantecatl) in Book Nine of the Florentine Codex (1577), Alonso Vegerano. Photo: courtesy the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and MiBACT

A reader could, for example, search for ‘feather’ and discover in Book Nine the secrets of the amantecah, the artists skilled in feather-working – one of the most highly esteemed art forms in the Aztec Empire. One could learn which birds might have the appropriate plumage – grackle feathers were good for outlines, apparently – but also read, in great detail, how the feathers would be gathered and bound, sometimes affixed to a backing with an adhesive made from orchid bulbs. Iridescent feathers from hummingbirds, quetzals, roseate spoonbills and blue cotingas would be carefully placed so they ‘glowed and shimmered,’ in the resplendent finery donned by kings, warriors and priests.

A xicalpapalotl butterfly in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex (detail; 1577), Alonso Vegerano. Photo: courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and MiBACT

European pigments were used to depict European subjects, while locally-sourced materials were reserved for subjects from the pre-Conquest period, as was revealed in a study by project co-head Diana Magaloni. Despite such important studies taking place over the past half century, the manuscript has remained unavailable to the public and often available only in partial form to scholars. The daunting size of the manuscript itself impeded a broader circulation of the work. The Digital Florentine Codex, a project helmed by Kim Richter and managed by Alicia Maria Houtrouw at the Getty Research Institute, has been enriched by the contributions of international scholars, including co-project directors Kevin Terraciano from UCLA and Jeanette Favrot Peterson from UCSB, linguists from the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas in Mexico, and a large team of specialists. The Digital Florentine Codex team has made this important manuscript not only accessible but inviting. The reader in search of one subject cannot help but stumble upon a fascinating description of another: merchants, for example, tried not to call attention to themselves, walking about ‘wearing only their miserable maguey fiber capes,’ or that men who were distinguished by their bravery were allowed to wear lip plugs. It is a project that rewards getting lost.

Merchants acquiring quetzal feathers in Book Nine of the Florentine Codex (detail; 1577), Alonso Vegerano. Photo: courtesy the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and MiBACT

The Digital Florentine Codex also underscores the complexities of translation in a broader sense, not just the evident and impressive labour behind the Getty Research Institute’s initiative, but how ideas are transmitted (or not) and transformed. The side-by-side translations (which include the first English translation of the Spanish text, by León García Garagarza) encourage us to go from one to the other – an exercise that reveals distinct interests and understandings. From Nahuatl to Spanish a reader can see how concepts are elided or softened; the translations of Nahuatl to English bring back some of the rich texture of Mexica worldviews, whereas the English translation of Spanish text reveals frequent ‘code-switching’ and the use of Nahuatl words, many of which have made their way into modern Spanish. The prologue to Book Two of the Florentine Codex notes that the manuscript ‘has been examined and revised by many, and for many years, and much effort and many misfortunes have been endured in order to render it in the state in which it is now found.’

It is unquestionably cause for celebration that, thanks to the Digital Florentine Codex project, this wondrous window has been opened on to otherwise unattainable information, both in text and illustration, that offers new paths to enrich scholars and the broader public.

View the Digital Florentine Codex: florentinecodex.getty.edu