The Art Institute announced a transformative $75 million gift Tuesday to construct a new gallery building and begin an ambitious reshaping of its sprawling campus in the heart of downtown Chicago’s lakefront.

The lions will remain at their post in front of the historic 131-year-old main building along South Michigan Avenue, but their expansive backyard is set for a museum makeover, with the first of potentially several major structural additions.

The largest single naming gift in the Art Institute’s history will create the Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed Building, which will house the museum’s collection of late 19th century modern and contemporary art, according to a news release.

While the design and location have yet to be finalized, the building will offer “spectacular views of the park, the city and the lake,” and begin the process of “re-envisioning” the campus layout as part of a five-year old conceptual plan, according to the news release.

In 2019, the Art Institute retained Barcelona architectural firm Barozzi Veiga to craft a master plan for further expansion of the museum’s 1 million square feet of space, with an eye toward transforming the campus by opening it up to Grant Park, the lake and even the train lines bisecting the 17-acre site.

“The larger goal of this campus plan is to really open up the museum to the unique attributes of the site,” James Rondeau, the Art Institute’s president and director, told the Tribune. “Even the trains are something we want to embrace rather than disguise.”

Recruited by Rondeau, the former chair of the museum’s department of modern and contemporary art, who was elevated to helm the Art Institute in 2016, the architects’ reimagining has mostly been confined to interior projects. Work to date includes an ongoing remodeling of the Michigan Avenue lobby and several redesigned gallery spaces, Rondeau said.

The plan to create new buildings and redesign the campus was delayed by two years during the pandemic, Rondeau said, when attendance plummeted and the Art Institute, like many other museums, focused on cost-cutting measures rather than capital improvements.

While attendance remains about 15% below pre-pandemic levels, the Art Institute is still a tourist magnet for the city, with 1.3 million visitors projected to pass between the bronze lions guarding the main entrance on South Michigan Avenue this year, according to the museum.

That, and a $75 million gift, has enabled the Barozzi Veiga plan to expand the infrastructure and reshape the hodgepodge campus layout to begin moving forward, Rondeau said.

“We’re finally manifesting, in an iterative way, part of their larger vision for the campus,” Rondeau said. “The Fleischman-Lougheed project will be the first of the Barozzi Veiga vision that is new construction.”

Fleischman and Lougheed are Miami-based donors with midwestern roots and a long history of supporting the arts.

A Highland Park native, Fleischman is an attorney, investor, philanthropist and a major collector of modern and contemporary art. He serves on the Art Institute board and as an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

“What really solidified our commitment was the vision of the Art Institute and its director James Rondeau,” Fleischman said in the news release. “James’s passion and aspirations for the Art Institute are reflected in the museum’s exhibitions, acquisitions, plans for campus expansion, and the exciting new building. We are really pleased to be completely aligned with the Art Institute’s vision for the future.”

In addition to his interest in the arts, Lougheed, who grew up in Ottumwa, Iowa, is an educator, author and explorer credited with identifying a new palm species on the Caribbean island of Bonaire.

While the Art Institute is already the second largest art museum in North America, the broader expansion plan is not about size as much putting more of the permanent collection on display, with 80% of new space being devoted to galleries, Rondeau said.

The Art Institute of Chicago features a collection of nearly 300,000 works, including such famous paintings as “American Gothic” by Grant Wood, “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat and “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper.

Born from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, the Art Institute was founded in 1879 and moved to its permanent home a little over a decade later, rising up on landfill along the original Lake Michigan shoreline.

The centerpiece of the Art Institute is a classical Beaux Arts building built in 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exposition, which was designed by Boston architectural firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. The lions on pedestals were added the following year.

Since then, the Art Institute has added seven more buildings, most recently the dramatic Modern Wing, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, which supplanted the original Goodman Theatre along Monroe Street. When it opened in 2009, the 264,000-square-foot building overlooking Millennium Park was dubbed a “temple of light” by then-Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin.

The 2009 addition expanded the museum’s footprint by 35 percent and created a new entrance on the north end of campus.

Like the Modern Wing, the Fleischman-Lougheed building will be an “autonomous architectural statement,” but remain in concert with the classical museum campus, Rondeau said. If all goes as planned, he said, it will be the first of several new buildings as part of the reimagined layout.

“This is probably the fundamental anchor of our project,” Rondeau said. “We do have aspirations that will touch other aspects of campus.”

By century-old city ordinance, the new building can be no taller than the main museum, limiting it to three stories.

As to where the expansion takes place, it will necessarily move away from the developed Michigan Avenue facade and toward Columbus Drive on the east, “repurposing spaces that are partly empty right now,” Rondeau said.

That could leave such features as McKinlock Court, a century-old outdoor garden with a replica of Carl Milles’s “Fountain of the Tritons” that has long served as a unique events space and alfresco oasis for weary museum visitors, vulnerable to redevelopment.

“Not necessarily, but it’s one possibility,” Rondeau said.

Rondeau did not offer a timetable for the new building’s development, but said the museum will move “as quickly as is responsible” to put the $75 million gift to work – at a location to be determined.

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