Museum of Fine Arts outlines expansion at City Park, staff flag park access and parking concerns

Representatives of the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts on July 15 briefed the Mayor and City Council on schematic designs for a multi‑phase expansion that would enlarge the main museum on the lakefront and create an education center at the Key Street site.

The museum presentation, led by Sarah Hall of the museum, described a phased project that would add roughly 4,300 square feet to the museum's principal exhibition gallery (from the current about 2,400 square feet) and move classrooms and hands‑on education activity to a renovated 12,000‑square‑foot education center at Key Street. Hall said the work is intended to improve accessibility, increase space for larger exhibitions and expand free and paid youth programming. “We wanna be a Mid Atlantic destination,” Hall said, and later called the proposal “a vision that benefits everyone.”

Why it matters: museum officials said the additional gallery and education space would let the museum host more ambitious exhibitions and take more…