What is happening with the Kimball Art Center? In short: the Park City, Utah nonprofit has chosen an architecture firm and will now begin designing a new facility at Kimball Junction, on 1.92 acres of land it already owns next to the PEAK Center, formerly the Skullcandy Building. Executive Director Aldy Milliken announced the plan on 5 November 2026, and the firm in question is Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss practice behind the Tate Modern in London and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. According to KPCW, the move would let the Kimball nearly double in size.
For readers outside Utah, a little orientation helps. The Kimball Art Center is a nonprofit art organisation that currently sits on Kearns Boulevard, next to the Boneyard Saloon. Kimball Junction is a district of Summit County, and the centre has been searching for an architecture firm to design its new building there. The story matters to us at Art News because it shows, in unusually clear steps, how a small arts organisation goes about commissioning a major building: it starts with words, not drawings.
What is a building brief, and why did the Kimball write one first?
A building brief is a written document that spells out what an organisation needs from a building before any architect puts pencil to paper. Milliken described it precisely that way on KPCW's "Local News Hour" on 5 November: "We basically started a year ago with making a building brief, which is sort of helping us define what we wanted to achieve, and that was separate from a piece of property." The question the brief asked, in his words, was "what is the Kimball Art Center really good at?" This connects to our earlier piece, The Box, Plymouth Wins Art Fund Museum of the Year 2026.
That sequencing is the part newcomers often miss. The brief came before the site search and before the architect, because a brief defines the purpose a building must serve. Only once the Kimball knew what it wanted to achieve did the question of where, and with whom, become answerable.
How did the Kimball choose Herzog & de Meuron?
The selection was a narrowing exercise. Milliken said the nonprofit started with 30 options and gradually reduced the field by reviewing proposals, visiting completed projects around the country, and inviting firms to visit Park City. Herzog & de Meuron emerged from that process, though not without hesitation on the centre's side.
The concern was scale. The Swiss firm has worked on large projects such as the Tate Modern and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Milliken admitted the Kimball worried about being overlooked. "We were actually concerned that we wouldn't get the attention that we deserved. We're a smaller project," he said. "But they convinced us that they actually loved what we were doing." He added that the firm liked the Kimball's emphasis on education and how the nonprofit connects people with art and the artistic process.
There is a broader idea in Milliken's framing. "What we were doing represents a new phase of engagement for art museums in this conversation of what's happening around the country about how art spaces and how art museums can serve the public," he told KPCW. For a centre whose strength is education rather than spectacle, that argument clearly carried weight with the architects.
What happens next, and how long will it take?
Several timelines now run alongside each other, and they are worth keeping separate:
- Design: the Kimball and Herzog & de Meuron will now start collaborating on designs. The total cost is still to be determined.
- Fundraising: Milliken said the team plans to fundraise for about two years before construction begins.
- The current site: the Kimball will remain at its Kearns Boulevard location for at least the next four years.
Read together, those points sketch a patient schedule. Nothing is being demolished or vacated in haste; the centre keeps operating where it is while the new facility moves from brief to drawings to funded reality.
Why does a small centre hiring a famous firm matter?
Because it inverts a familiar pattern. Large museums commission celebrated architects all the time; a community-scale nonprofit doing so is rarer, and the Kimball's own caution about being a "smaller project" shows it knew that. The match suggests the firm saw something in the brief worth its attention, and the brief is what made that possible. Readers curious about how art institutions present themselves to the public more broadly might find our piece on A First Visit to an Art Fair Reveals Booths, Previews and Price Lists a useful companion, since both stories are really about how art organisations shape an encounter with the public. Readers following this should also see A First Visit to an Art Fair Reveals Booths, Previews and Price Lists.
One transparency note belongs here: KPCW reports that the Kimball Art Center is a financial supporter of KPCW, the station that broke the story. That does not change the factual content of the announcement, but we think readers should know it. For those following how cultural buildings get made, the next milestone will be the design work itself, once it emerges from the collaboration between the centre and its new architects.
