Cotton Mill Studios to host event to benefit Asheville Art Museum Nov. 16 – Asheville Citizen

For architect Barbara Field, the $2 million city government set aside to help pay for an Asheville Art Museum expansion represents a higher property tax bill.

Restaurateur Peter Pollay sees it differently. Additional museum patrons means more customers walking into his Posana Café on Biltmore Avenue wearing stickers showing they just toured the museum.

Altogether, the $24 million art museum expansion — to be paid for with money from private and public sources — would double the museum’s size, taking it from 24,400 to 50,900 square feet.

The added space and other improvements would make room for high-profile traveling exhibits and show significantly more of the museum’s collection.

That would in turn bring more visitors to its location on the south side of Pack Square, project supporters say, helping area businesses, injecting more energy into the city’s already vibrant arts scene and giving tourists another reason to come to Asheville or stay another day.

“It’s a total game-changer,” said Pam Myers, art museum director. “Our neighbors in downtown want the project. It creates a state-of-the-art museum facility. We don’t have that now, and we need that.”

But as the views of Field and Pollay suggest, support for the expansion has hardly been universal, and its

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