Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art has been awarded a $500,000 Kresge Foundation challenge grant to support its new underground extension, scheduled to break ground this spring, pending municipal approvals.

The museum must raise an additional $1.5 million by July 1, 2009, to receive the challenge grant.

The museum, designed by I.M. Pei, opened in 1973 as a permanent home for Cornell's collection of 9,000 artworks and serves as a cultural resource, both for the university and the region. Today, the 62,000-square-foot building holds more than 30,000 works and welcomes more than 80,000 visitors a year.

The $19.5 million, 16,000-square-foot wing will include a 150-seat lecture room, a workshop studio, new galleries, art storage and office space. The main building's fifth-floor Asian art galleries will be renovated to create additional exhibition space, and one floor will be reconfigured to include a study center with open storage, a photographic study room and a seminar room.

The project has been designed by Pei Cobb Freed and Partners, with John Sullivan, Cornell Class of 1962, acting as architect in charge.

The Kresge Foundation is a private foundation that supports communities by building the capacity of nonprofit organizations in the fields of health, the environment, arts and culture, education, human services and community development.