Architecture and the Aims of the Art Museum

Architecture

Public attitudes

Contemporary art can sometimes seem at odds with a public that does not feel that art and its institutions share its values. In Britain, in the 1990s, contemporary art became a part of popular culture, with artists becoming stars, but this did not lead to a hoped-for "cultural utopia". Some critics like Julian Spalding and Donald Kuspit have suggested that skepticism, even rejection, is a legitimate and reasonable response to much contemporary art. Brian Ashbee in an essay called "Art Bollocks" criticizes "much installation art, photography, conceptual art, video and other practices generally called post-modern" as being too dependent on verbal explanations in the form of theoretical discourse.

Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities; this article focuses primarily on the visual arts, which includes the creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like the decorative arts, it involves the creation of objects where the practical considerations of use are essential—in a way that they usually are not in a painting, for example. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of art or the arts. Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts.

Art may be characterized in terms of mimesis (its representation of reality), expression, communication of emotion, or other qualities. During the Romantic period, art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".Though the definition of what constitutes art is disputed and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of imaginative or technical skill stemming from human agency and creation.

The nature of art, and related concepts such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.

Since many critics complain that flamboyant museum architecture distracts viewers from the contemplation of artworks, it is worth noting that disinterested contemplation was not the primary aim of those who first opened private collections to the public in the eighteenth century. The first museums had a variable mix of aims: royal or national prestige, the preservation of "heritage," providing models for artists and craftsmen, and the enlightenment of the public with an emphasis on art's moral and civic benefits. In terms of architectural form, most of the purpose built art museums of the nineteenth century adopted some version of classicism, typically with a grand stairway up to an entry under a pediment and columns. Once inside there was usually a great hall, sometimes with a dome and rotunda or even a multi-story atrium.These entryways and reception halls are impressive architectural statements in their own right, and from that perspective, today's dramatic reception halls by Gehry or Calatrava are variations on an old theme. It may be that part of what makes many recent museums seem like a radical break with an architectural tradition more attentive to art, is that we have become so accustomed to classical museums that we seldom pay much attention to their architecture.

Moreover, we may be too hasty in thinking that nineteenth century architects were keeping humbly in the background. Leo von Klenze's Glypothek (1815) for King Ludwig of Bavaria, was a monumental building dominated by a high central portico lined with eight Ionic columns. We can see the conflict between architecture and art already beginning in the disagreement over the design of the interior, since the scholar-advisor for the project wanted a sparse interior to set off the statuary, but Klenze won out with his plan for a richly ornamented interior in which even the gallery floors and ceilings were heavily patterned in dark colors. Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum in Berlin (1830), with its majestic colonnade running the full length of the front, and its magnificent dome modeled on the Pantheon, was attacked by the connoisseur, Alois Hirt, on the grounds that "the art objects are not there for the museum; rather the museum is built for the objects," the very complaint we often hear today.

By the end of the nineteenth century some of the original purposes of art museums were increasingly supplanted by the idea of the museum as a quiet refuge for contemplation. This shift was most dramatically manifested in American museums by two changes. First, the "battle of the casts" was won by those who argued that whatever the educational value of copies, a museum's primary purpose was the display of original works of the highest quality. During the same period, the older practice of hanging pictures close together, sometimes in rows reaching to the ceiling, was gradually supplanted by hanging single works at eye level with enough space between them to allow the viewer to focus on one work at a time. As for museum architecture, classicism continued to dominate up to 1914, and there was not much opportunity for new museum building between 1914 and 1945 with two world wars and the Depression. One exception was the 1939 Museum of Modern Art in New York with its spare façade and its "neutral" white galleries meant to maximize a purely aesthetic contemplation, undisturbed by architectural ornament. After the war, the architecture vs. art issue was most dramatically raised by Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Guggenheim, New York (1959), whose striking sculptural form and enormous atrium not only upstaged the art within, but the museum's spiral ramp, with its curving walls and limited viewing depth, was felt by many to hamper appreciation of the art. Between Wright's Guggenheim and Gehry's Guggenheim, Rogers and Piano's Pompidou Center (1977) marked the most important development in museum design and function.

The Pompidou combined a museum of modern art with a film center, music archive, library, restaurant, bar, and store, and, as if that were not enough, by including a huge public plaza in front and a viewing platform on top, the Pompidou Center proclaimed the arrival of the museum as entertainment destination. The rest of the museum world would take a while to catch up, but eventually even the most staid institutions have adopted some of the Pompidou's strategies for attracting crowds. Although the Pompidou's exoskeleton and colorful pipes on the outside are its most striking aspect, Rogers and Piano left the inside a vast open space to be configured as needs determined and so the interior did not directly compete with the art.

Among the ostensible motives behind the multiple functions of the Pompidou were the integration of high and popular culture and a democratization of the museum audience. In Britain and the United States during the 1980s similar concerns were powerfully reinforced by economic pressures leading to a constant quest for new members and increased ticket sales, for which a gaggle of varied attractions - films, concerts, children's centers, shops, and restaurants in addition to "blockbuster" exhibitions - have served to make the museum a competitive destination for leisure activity. Not only can spectacular architecture be an important part of this mix, but the architecture itself must now include attractive spaces for all the new activities. Obviously, the extent to which the museum as entertainment destination has overtaken the more traditional functions of the museum varies enormously from museum to museum, but clearly it is not just the architecture that vies with art for the visitor's attention.

This brief look at the history of the art museum shows that the tension between architecture and art goes back almost to the art museum's beginning and also shows that the purposes of art museums have varied enormously over the years and still vary from museum to museum. Once we realize that traditional museums were not inherently more respectful of art than more recent ones, and once we pay attention to the changed functional aims museums, the iconic designs of a Gehry or Hadid are less likely to seem merely the product of cheeky architects laying claim to being the real artists on the block. 4. New Museums with Permanent CollectionsGuggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997) Certainly, the most important new art museum built in the last decade to house part of a permanent collection is Gehry's BilbaoGuggenheim.Although the glittering Baroque curves of its sculptural exterior are its best known feature, the Bilbao is equally notable for its unusual interior. The soaring, curvilinear atrium reaches a hundred and sixty feet, and many of the galleries that extend off of it are oddly shaped and outsized, one of them, early on baptized the "Boat" or "Fish" gallery, is longer than a football field and even dwarfed a huge Serra piece installed there during the museum's early years.

Yet these vast spaces were not simply a reach for giganticism on Gehry's part, but reflected the conviction of Thomas Krens, the Guggenheim's director, that contemporary art demands exhibition spaces of huge scale and extraordinary character. Indeed, Krens - and the Bilbao government - were betting on a spectacular piece of architecture to revitalize the city (and help pull the Guggenheim enterprise out of debt). The performance artist, Andrea Fraser, has ingeniously called attention to the way the Bilbao museum's audio guide spends its first six minutes celebrating the building itself, with a soothing voice assuring us: "Isn't this a wonderful place? Its uplifting. It's like a Gothic cathedral. You can feel your soul rise up with the building around you... every surface in this space curves... these curves are gentle, but in their huge scale powerfully sensual. You'll see people going up to the walls and stroking them. You might feel the desire to do so yourself." After that come on, the art will have to be a let down; especially since you can't touch it. (In her video performance, Fraser parodies the audio guide by going up to one of the curving stone walls and sensuously rubbing her body against it.) From the start, the Bilbao museum was meant to be a major art attraction in itself. The question is whether the architecture just upstages the art it contains - art which is, after all, mostly the same kind thing one can see in any modern art museum - or whether the design of the galleries actually interferes with the viewer's attention to the works once they get to them.

Gehry himself has addressed the architecture vs. art issue, rejecting what he calls "the mythology... that a museum for art has to be deferential and... not compete with the art." Most artists, Gehry claims, want see their work in a museum that is itself a strong work of art. Yet Gehry developed his Bilbao design in consultation with museum representatives, providing more conventional, rectangular galleries for older types of modernist painting, and reserving the high, asymmetrical galleries with their performance catwalks for late modernist works. Several artists have paid tribute to Gehry's design, and some critics believe it to have achieved a kind of synthesis of architecture and art. Other critics, however, feel that some of the more dramatic galleries simply dwarf most of what is put in them. One of the more successful aspects of Gehry's plan is that the major galleries on each floor are connected only by the atrium, so that one needs to return to the central hall with its views to the outside before going on to the next art experience. This has the advantage that the visitor is less likely to experience visual overload of the kind that occurs in traditional museum layouts in which one gallery leads to another in a seemingly endless succession. Pulitzer Foundation, St. Louis (2001) Tadao Ando, whose Pulitzer Foundation museum in St. Louis could almost fit inside one of Bilbao's galleries, has gone even farther than Gehry in an effort to reconcile architecture and art. Part of what makes the Pulitzer hold architecture and art together as well as it does is the fact that its patron, Emily Pulitzer, commissioned two large artworks in advance from Elsworth Kelly and Richard Serra and asked Ando to work with the two artists as he designed the building. Ando has even commented on the difficulty of interacting with "such uncompromising artists" and the changes to his design that resulted.

The Pulitzer's clean geometry combined with Ando's signature use of natural light and water invites a contemplative attitude.

The long main gallery opens at one end onto a descending stairway that leads to the lower level, thus creating a two story end wall, lighted naturally from above. The work you see on the end wall is the 28 foot high commission for the museum by Elsworth Kelly, called Blue Black. The most striking aspect of this two story space is the way the illumination varies with the time of day, sending a strip of light down the side wall and across the floor in front of Kelly's work.

For the viewer, the space is not just a neutral container but thanks to its dimensions and the effect of the changing length of the strip of light, it generates an unusually integrated experience, a combined work of art and architecture. A purist might be offended by this interplay, feeling that Ando has interfered with the integrity of Kelly's work. Yet, not only has Kelly praised Ando's design, he even got Ando to change the height of the doorways on the right side of the wall to more closely echo the proportions of his work. With the Pulitzer, Ando has succeeded in making a strong architectural statement that gracefully serves the art within.

Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004) The Museum of Modern Art, by Yoshio Taniguchi is in one sense an addition and remodeling since it incorporates the Cesar Pelli tower, the restored façades of the 1939 Goodwin and Stone building and Philip Johnson's east wing, as well as an enlarged version of the much loved sculpture court. But despite these incorporations it is a totally new design that required relocating the entire collection during construction.

Taniguchi's daunting task was to design a building that not only related to the architecture that preceded it, but, above all, to show the museum's unmatched but diverse collection to good advantage. Stylistically, the design looks back to modernism, a move appropriate to the museum's previous architecture and its core collection, but it does so in a building that aims, in Taniguchi's words, "to disappear," so that one is conscious primarily of the art. Apart from the enormous atrium, the most important architectural features of the interior are the cut outs and windows that connect different parts of the museum, and visually connect the museum to the surrounding buildings. In addition, the higher ceilings and larger room dimensions allow the works more space and give the new MoMA a much airier feeling. Yet, my impression is that the people who are going to New York to see the new MoMA, unlike most visitors to Bilbao or Milwaukee, are going to see its famed collection more than the building.

Taniguchi's willingness to pay tribute to his predecessors and to put the needs of the collection ahead of making a bold architectural statement of his own has not sat well with some architecture critics, who felt MoMA should have let a Koolhaas or a Libeskind put an adventurous piece of architecture in mid-town Manhattan. Whatever the virtues or faults of Taniguchi's design, the MoMA Board's selection of him underlined their confidence that a collection as powerful as MoMA's did not need a "Bilbao Effect."

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