The Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, in Cambridge Massachusetts, US, collectively known as the Harvard University Arts Museums (HUAM) are to be combined to create a centre for research and advancing professional development in the visual arts.

The new plan seeks to improve collaboration between the museums, while ensuring each will remain a distinct institution. Each museum will have a dedicated exhibition gallery and its own object based, multi media study centre.

The plan includes the renovation of the historic building at 32 Quincy Street on Harvard’s Cambridge campus, which will be led by Renzo Piano, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect. The building currently houses the Fogg Art museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

During the reconstruction of the Quincy Street site, both museums will relocate to an interim facility located in the former Citizens Bank building at Soldiers Field Road in Allston.

Thomas W. Lentz, the director of HUAM, said: “The HUAM have a multi-faceted mission that includes education and research and the ways in which we present our collections are absolutely central to fulfilling our mission”