On the ground level of the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s new Frankel wing, two glass walls join neatly, pushing toward State Street like the prow of a ship. Right now, the space they enclose isn’t much — something more to walk around, though it affords a nice view of the recently installed Mark di Suvero sculpture “Orion.”

“Most people are surprised to find out that it’s going to be a gallery,” said UMMA director James Steward.

Once UMMA reopens during winter term, after two years of renovations and new construction, the space will house temporary exhibitions of emerging contemporary artists.

“When we figured out how we were going to site the expansion, this is the space we first started thinking of to help us capture interest of people going past,” Steward said.

Work exhibited in this gallery will employ light, movement and other elements visible through the glass. Hopefully, according to Steward, being able to see such dynamic work without barriers — save for the glass walls — will lure passerby inside.

“There’s this idea: We want to make art part of the everyday experience,” he said.

The space is part of UMMA’s efforts to make the museum — and by extension, art in general — more accessible to everyone, every day, in its position as both a University resource and a community resource. According to Steward, UMMA is the largest museum between Detroit and Chicago and people come from great distances to visit. Each visitor, whatever his or her walk of life, should feel comfortable taking in a performance at UMMA’s new auditorium, viewing ceramics in what will be the first gallery space dedicated to Korean art at an American university, or simply having a cup of coffee while enjoying the view from the new café. The café and the museum's extended-hour "walk-through" space, which Steward is suggesting as a campus shortcut, are intended to draw otherwise unlikely visitors.

The old building and new Frankel wing will be multi-purpose. They will be split into galleries, research and conservation areas, educational and social spaces, storage, retail and a café.

“We worked very hard to integrate functions in this building,” Steward said. “We want to persuade visitors, when they come to the museum, to visit the whole thing.”

When the museum reopens after its $41.9 million makeover, it will be more than double the size of its old building, the Alumni Memorial Hall.

The University owns more than 18,000 art pieces, but was previously only able to show 3 percent of that collection at a time. UMMA’s off-site location at the juncture of South University and South Forest — what used to be the original Mitch’s Place bar — allowed for even more limited exhibitions. Now the added 53,000 square feet in the new building will allow UMMA to show 10 percent of its entire collection at a time. And viewing and appreciating this art need not be separate from learning about it.

What UMMA calls its open storage gallery is one way the museum seeks to combine art appreciation and education. The space that was once the Chinese gallery (renamed The Shirley Chang Gallery of Chinese Art in the new museum space) will now feature cabinets with floor-to-ceiling glass shelving. The construction of the gallery allows for a dense arrangement of 600 to 800 pieces — such as Chinese pots, American decorative arts objects, African pieces — that scholars and visitors can come in and study during the museum’s open hours without an appointment.

“It’s a way to create something in between the pristine display of art gallery spaces and dead storage space, a way of animating the collection,” Steward said. Call it experiential storage.

Around the corner from the open storage gallery is the old Japanese gallery space, which will become the Asian Art Conservation Laboratory's new location. UMMA’s Asian Art Conservation Lab has been around for 25 years and is one of few in the country.