The International Tennis HOF in Newport, RI today unveiled $3M in renovations to its museum during a ribbon-cutting and luncheon for about 130 donors, board members and press.
The upgrades, which were implemented between last November and Wednesday’s unveiling, had been in the works for two years and were funded through a portion of a $12M capital campaign launched by the ITHF called Tennis Forever, mostly consisting of private donors.
Nashville-based experience design agency Advent led the design of several spaces in the museum, including the opening (Celebration Gallery) and closing (Hall of Famers Gallery) exhibits, which now feature fresh finishes and interactive elements.
“We have to get ready for something I believe the sport of tennis has not seen ever, and who knows when it will happen again. The golden era,” said ITHF CEO Dan Faber, referencing the pending inductions of legends of the sport like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena and Venus Williams. “It’s going to be epic, and it’s going to come here to Newport, Rhode Island, which is really exciting.”
Faber said the ITHF hopes the renovations can enable the double or tripling of the site’s annual visitors, which he ballparked at 40,000 before the project. The work also added space that will increase the amount of inventory the museum can display. Before the renovations, the ITHF displayed about 10% of its available artifacts, according to ITHF SVP/Content & Partnerships Julianna Barbieri, but now will have room to increase that number by 30-40%.
“These two wings [the opening and closing exhibits] hadn’t been renovated since the late ’90’s,” Barbieri said. “That alone was a massive opportunity for us. It was also time to say, look, we need more gallery space. We have so many more stories to tell and artifacts to share.”
Advent’s digital team developed an augmented reality sculpture for the Celebration Gallery, which users interact with by pointing their phone camera at floating tennis balls that redirect to digital biographies of HOF inductees. Advent also updated an immersive video presentation about the history of the Grand Slams narrated by Federer (and sponsored by Rolex); added a retail location at the end of the museum, lounge space at the front and a U.S. Open-specific gallery midway through; and created a new final exhibit -- a row of aluminum-cast rackets that are each assigned to an inductee bio.
“Museums can be stuck in the past -- and that’s why we felt this was a good fit,” said Advent CEO John Roberson, whose company has also led team-based HOF projects for the Chiefs and Cowboys. “The incredible vision [is] modernizing and future-proofing this story.”
Today‘s event was also attended by ITHF President Patrick McEnroe, ITHF inductee Gigi Fernandez and Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, who said before the ribbon cutting that, “it’s so important for the state of Rhode Island to have this Hall of Fame here in Newport, which is very important to our state, the tourism and the economy.”
The ITHF later this year will stage a new combined ATP/WTA Challenger event on the Hall of Fame grounds and its 2025 induction -- headlined by Maria Sharapova and the Bryan Brothers -- in August.
