With a mission for all visitors to be students, the Manetti Shrem Museum invites participation and interaction across generational, racial, economic, and other societal divisions. The museum is free to the public and accessible to all. Liberating education from the closed classroom, the museum creates opportunities for informal, active, tactile and interdisciplinary learning. Flexibility and variety of spaces throughout the museum allow activities of different types and scales to occur together or in parallel, supporting the individual and collective, contemplative and conversational learning activities of the university as well as the broader community. The Collections Classroom provides an intimate setting for small seminars to learn directly from actual art objects in the controlled museum environment. Medium-sized lectures take place in the Community Education Room. A clear-span gallery area is reconfigurable and expandable to accommodate many different kinds of exhibitions and events. The Events Plaza hosts art performance day and night. Transforming an empty lot previously used for construction staging into an arts institution, the Manetti Shrem Museum integrates a variety of environmentally friendly systems. All LED lighting reduces electrical and heating loads, while linking room occupancy monitors to the mechanical system further reduces energy use. Water-saving fixtures and native, drought-tolerant landscaping lessen water consumption in California’s parched Central Valley, while stormwater run-off is retained and treated on site. The building incorporates locally sourced materials and ties into the university’s centralized photovoltaic farm. Through these systems and responsible decision-making, the LEED Platinum museum exceeds the university’s sustainability requirements.