Harvard Square---the Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard University along with shops, restaurants, businesses and residences---is famously dense, busy, and brick-lined. A challenge emerged there to integrate, renovate and expand Harvard Art Museums' three buildings under one 21st-century roof. Italian architect Renzo Piano delivered with the weekend reveal of his ethereal expansion and masterful renovation, begun in 2008.

The public got its first look on Nov. 16. The new Harvard Art Museums -- encompassing the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum -- are now spectacularly laid out under one state-of-the-art roof. 

Exhibition space is increased by 40 percent. A massive glass atrium, or as the architect calls it, a "glazed lantern," allows controlled natural light to filter through to new conservation labs, an art study center, galleries, and more. Whether your interest is Chinese jade or German Expressionism, Pre-Raphaelites or the latest contemporary art, your visit is to one destination.

A highpoint is certainly the reinstalled galleries showcasing some of Harvard's 250,000-object collections. One visitor described them to ARTFIXdaily as "...truly beautiful and transformative ...spectacular! Plus, the exhibits are so intelligent, American art mixed with European art of a period...." 

And then there are the Rothkos. In London, the Tate Gallery nails the transcendent experience of Mark Rothko's work with room installations exclusively of his masterful abstractions. A temporary exhibit (through July 26, 2015) at Harvard similarly displays Rothko with six crimson-hued panels.

A commission from Harvard University in the early 1960s, the large-scale panels were originally displayed in the university’s Holyoke Center (now the Smith Campus Center) from 1964 to 1979. Floor-to-ceiling windows exposed the murals to significant natural light that caused catastrophic fading. The panels were sent to storage for decades.

In an attempt to once again show the murals in their original state of color, a team from Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, and the University of Basel in Switzerland developed a technique of digitally projecting specially calibrated light to correct the murals’ color loss.

“Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals” presents the five panels that once hung in the Holyoke Center along with a sixth mural, never before exhibited, that Rothko decided not to install. The paintings are shown with related studies that offer visitors a glimpse into the creative process behind the Harvard project.

Harvard Art Museums also debuted a new website harvardartmuseums.org with navigational tools that offer assistance in both actual and virtual visits to the museums. Users can consult interactive floor plans to learn about the contents of the galleries, including images of each object on view. An enhanced search engine provides another powerful means of engagement, enabling users to search by keyword, artist, title, and even gallery number to discover relevant information and images.