Staff photo / Andy Gray From left, Kathryn and Russ Adams of Canfield look at the Pierre Soulages mural installed in the new Vincent & Phyllis Bacon Wing at the The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown.

YOUNGSTOWN — Vincent Bacon grew up going to the Butler Institute of American Art. It’s where he fell in love with art.

“I wanted to be an architect, but I didn’t have the artistic talent, so I became an engineer — the next best thing,” he said.

Bacon and wife, Phyllis, now have their names on a gallery in that museum. Hundreds filled the Butler on Saturday for a $100-a-ticket dinner for the opening of the Vincent & Phyllis Bacon Grand Gallery, a $2 million addition to the 104-year-old arts institution.

“It’s exciting to see so many people here,” said Bacon, of Canfield. “It should be this crowded all the time.”

The addition was designed by architect C. Robert Buchanan primarily to display the Pierre Soulages mural “14 May, 1968,” a work made up of 294 11-by-11-inch ceramic tiles that is 20 feet wide and 14 feet high.

It originally was created for Pittsburgh’s One Oliver Plaza. It was acquired by the Butler in 2010 and installed at its Trumbull branch in Howland, and Bacon was instrumental in bringing the work to the Mahoning Valley from Pittsburgh. The Butler won a court battle to retain custody of the work from that museum, now known as the Medici Museum of Art.

“It feels really good,” Butler Executive Director Louis A. Zona said about seeing the work in the new space, which also includes a lower level gallery that is showing the private collection of David M. and Cecile Draime of Howland, which first was exhibited at the Butler in 2022. Two Soulages paintings from the Draime collection are being shown adjacent to the mural along with paintings by Paul Jenkins, who spent his teen years in Struthers, and later lived and worked in Paris, where he was a friend and contemporary of Soulages.

Doug Lumsden, who is serving his second nine-year term on the Butler’s board of trustees and is the president of Davis International, the general contractor on the expansion, said one of the biggest challenges was creating an addition of this scale without disturbing the foundation of the original structure.

Becky Keck, president of Students Motivated by the Arts (SMARTS) in Youngstown, called the Soulages mural her favorite work of art. Others searched for meaning in the massive abstract piece.

“What do you see in it?,” Dr. Rashid Abdu of Canfield asked. He didn’t have an answer himself but he described the art and the expansion housing it as very impressive.

“I think Dr. Zona does a fantastic job with this museum,” Abdu said. “It’s really one of the gems of the Valley. When people come from out of town, this is one of the places we bring them.”

Kathryn Adams of Canfield, who is a docent at the Butler, said, “Wow, this is really something. It’s just a wonderful addition, and it’s so great you can see it from the outside. It’s very impressive, and maybe it will lure people into the Butler.”

Susan Rowley of Farmdale, who also is a Butler docent, praised the natural light in the new addition.

Ryerson and Caren Dalton, longtime Mahoning Valley residents who now live in Chagrin Falls, said they enjoyed the mural when it was in Howland and are happy it’s now in Youngstown.

“I’m glad Vince and Phyllis rescued it once and now they’ve rescued it again,” Ryerson Dalton said.

In addition to celebrating the addition, Saturday’s event also honored Zona for his 42 years of leadership at the Butler, Buchanan for his long history designing expansions of the original building, and the David Bermant Foundation for its 2021 donation to the Butler of a kinetic art collection valued at $3.4 million.

agray@tribtoday.com