Open now at RAM's Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, From the Ground Up: Building Racine Art Museum honors RAM's tenth anniversary with materials that document the development of the museum for Racine. Floor plans, photographs, blue prints, a building model, and ephemera show the process that led up to the museum's grand opening 10 years ago.

Photography: Jon Bolton, Racine

This exhibition is a snapshot of an important moment in RAM's history. For those visitors acquainted with the building project, it offers an opportunity to reminisce and to contemplate what has changed and what has stayed the same since the museum's early phases of conception, design, and construction.

In May of 2003, Racine Art Museum opened the doors of its award-winning Main Street space in downtown Racine. Rooted in the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts-still an integral part of the organization as a whole-building RAM offered the opportunity for institutional growth in a variety of capacities, including more exhibition and storage space.

Designed by the Chicago architecture firm Brininstool + Lynch, the museum is an environmentally sound and visually striking reuse of two existing structures that join together in an "exploration of transparency, translucency, opacity, and light." The RAM facility features over 10,000 square feet of exhibition space, an entire floor dedicated to collection care and art preparation, a museum store, art library, and administrative offices.

A portion of From the Ground Up revisits the Chicago Architecture Foundation's 2005 exhibition of specially commissioned portraits by Scottish photographer Graham MacIndoe. From the Chicago-based architectural firm of Brininstool + Lynch to RAM board members and staff at the time, these photographs offer a personal dimension to the story of the museum's design and construction.

From the Ground Up is made possible at RAM's Wustum Museum of Fine Art by: Presenting Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, The Estate of Emile H. Mathis II, in Memory of his Parents: Emil H. and Anna T. Mathis, SC Johnson, Windgate Charitable Foundation; Gold Sponsors - National Endowment for the Arts, Racine United Arts Fund; Silver Sponsors - Elwood Corporation, Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, Racine Community Foundation, W.T. Walker Group, Inc., Wisconsin Arts Board; Bronze Sponsors - The A.C. Buhler Family, CNH America LLC, E.C. Styberg Foundation, Inc., Educators Credit Union, In Sink Erator, The Norbell Foundation, Real Racine, Robert W. Baird & Co., Runzheimer Foundation, Ruud Family Foundation.