Beginning in June of next year, the University's Museum of Art will undergo extensive renovations and expansions that will dramatically change the character of the museum.

The renovations are scheduled to be completed in a little more than two years. During that time period, the museum will relocate to a temporary gallery space less than one-tenth the size of its current building.

The museum expansion will include an addition of 53,000 square feet of space onto the side of the building facing Mason Hall. The addition will not only include more gallery space, but also areas for film screenings and dance performances, a cafe, a computer center and five multi-use classrooms for University courses. The classrooms will range from small seminar rooms to a 200-person auditorium and will house courses in all disciplines.

Because the classes housed in the museum will not be limited to art courses, students will be able to attend a class in the new addition and have an "accidental encounter" with great works of art along the way, which will hopefully spark their interest in art, said Ruth Slavin, the museum's curator for education.

While the museum has always tried to offer a wide variety of programs, the small size of the current building meant that only one activity - a school group or a performance for example - could be scheduled at a time, Slavin said. The expanded museum will be able to offer multiple arts programs at once.

In addition to the new classrooms, performance areas and galleries, there will be two new "object study rooms" where students and professors can make appointments to view items from the museum's collection that are not on display, Slavin said.

The renovation will include upgrades to most of the major systems in the building, including the security, climate control and fire safety systems, Museum Director James Steward said. It will also involve knocking down walls in the existing exhibition spaces and reopening some skylights that were part of the building's original 1907 architecture, he added.

Funding for the $34.5-million project has been provided mostly by alumni donations. So far, more than $28 million has been raised, and the museum expects to reach its fundraising goal before construction begins, Steward said.

During the time it will be closed, the museum will operate in a temporary exhibit space on South University Avenue. The building, which has been empty for many years, is only about 4,000 square feet. Due to the small size of the temporary gallery, the museum will not display any of the more than 17,000 works of art in its permanent collection, but will instead house a series of exhibitions, Steward said.

The exhibits, which will begin this spring in the current building, will revolve around a common theme of photography, film and video.

"We chose this because in many ways it has been the defining art movement of the modern day," Steward said, adding that the exhibits will work well in the "raw, - more downtown warehouse ambiance" of the temporary gallery space.

While the physical location of the museum will be much smaller during the construction, the museum hopes to continue to have a strong presence at the University and will host a wide variety of programs all over campus. "It will almost become a museum without walls during that time," Steward said.

The museum plans to hold student focus groups this year to decide on the best locations for museum-sponsored programs and develop effective ways to let students know where to find them, Steward said. The museum will also solicit help from the focus groups to name the temporary gallery space.

Museum staff will be working twice as hard during the renovation to both continue to provide arts programming for the public and to research and restore artwork in the permanent collection while it is in storage, Slavin said.

Despite the inconveniences during the two-year construction period, Steward said he believes the museum and community will ultimately benefit, and the short-term pain will be worth it in the long run.