C104
article
"I
don't want to be educated;
I
want to be drowned in beauty..."1
Gemma
Tipton asks: what
do we really want from our art museums?
 |
| Frank
Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1997,
interior view, photo Erika Ede, courtesy Guggenheim
Museum Bilbao |
In 1972 when
Diana Vreeland was appointed 'Special Consultant' to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New
York, she was part of the new chapter in the story of
art spaces which saw them making the move from pedagogy
to pleasure, from education to entertainment. Curatorial
blockbusters and extravaganzas caused museum attendances
to soar, while architecture as well as art was called
into the service of creating the consummate visitor experience.
Museum directors, asked to justify their funding on the
basis of visitor numbers, scratched their heads and asked
themselves, how can we give them more... "Never worry
about the facts," Vreeland is reported to have said, "just
project an image to the public."2
But what images were the new breed of museums-as-entertainment
projecting, and how was the developing architectural vocabulary
of art spaces shaping these new images? Or, to put the
question differently, to what extent does the container
affect the contained, and how did taking the museum out
of the mausoleum change the way we look at, and make,
art?
Do we view
art differently in different spaces? The answer of course
is 'yes'. A recent example is Matisse Picasso3,
where the familiar images of these two art heavyweights
are first redefined by juxtaposition, and then again by
context. At MoMA QNS in New York (converion of former
staple factory, conversion architects: Michael Maltazan
Architecture, and Cooper Robertson and Partners, 2002),
as well as at Tate Modern in London (architects: Herzog
and de Meuron, 1994-2000), images that had seemed, in
the more hushed galleries of Tate Britain, or in the Musée
Picasso in Paris, quietly brilliant, now jumped off the
walls as shockingly challenging newcomers to the art scene.
While it should be noted that this reading would be closer
to that of their first viewing, it also demonstrated the
historicising effect of our venerable art spaces - which
will be discussed more fully in the next article.
In the last
essay in this series (CIRCA 102), we left off in the middle
of discussing how contemporary art spaces are put together.
A CIRCA online poll4 had
broken art spaces down into general elements - and notwithstanding
that art spaces often seem to suffer from being designed
by committee, we had used the committee approach to see
if there could be anything like a consensus on what would
constitute the 'perfect museum'.
The poll
asked: in your opinion are
the following good or bad for a museum of contemporary
art? - with the following results:
| |
good
|
no diff.
|
bad
|
| |
%
|
%
|
%
|
| 'bold'
statement architecture |
55
|
29
|
16
|
| controllable
natural light |
96
|
2
|
2
|
| large
atrium/foyer |
51
|
42
|
8
|
| large
glass 'shop' windows |
35
|
47
|
18
|
| good
storage area |
85
|
15
|
0
|
| impressive
entrance |
39
|
57
|
4
|
| irregular
'free form' areas |
48
|
43
|
9
|
| gift/book/coffee
shops |
63
|
34
|
4
|
|
'traditional'
space(with own features)
|
29
|
62
|
9
|
| a
'celebrity' architect |
18
|
63
|
20
|
| logical
progression of rooms |
80
|
16
|
4
|
| neutral
space |
69
|
24
|
7
|
| white
cube space |
46
|
39
|
15
|
|
'difficult'
areas that challenge the artist
|
36
|
38
|
27
|
The importance
of having a good storage area seems obvious enough, and
85% agreed that it was a necessary part of the function
of a contemporary art museum, with no one thinking it
was a bad thing to have. And how could it be? The issue
is more what makes a storage area good? Climatic controls
are obviously important, and security is of paramount
concern to museums with important and valuable collections.
Indeed, from a security point of view, IMMA are cagey
as to where exactly their unexhibited collection is kept.
Both the Douglas Hyde and the Hugh Lane Galleries in Dublin
have downgraded the importance of storage - the Douglas
Hyde to create their award-winning Gallery 2 (architects:
McCullough Mulvin, 2000-01), and the Hugh Lane to install
the Francis Bacon Studio (architects: David Chipperfield
and Mitchell Associates, 2000).
The Douglas
Hyde is a gallery rather than museum, and its role is
not that of a collector, but the logistics of receiving
touring exhibitions, and curating exhibitions to tour
elsewhere, still call for adequate space for storage.
The original store was very large, and so the addition
of Gallery 2 hasn't entirely compromised their space availability,
but installation access to the Douglas Hyde (architect:
ABK, 1978) has always been problematic in a gallery notorious
anyway for being a 'difficult space'. The store, which
doubles as a loading entrance, is reached down a steep
flight of external stairs and through two right-angled
turns. As work is brought through into the gallery, a
drop-height ceiling in the 'triangle' area means that
while large canvases can be re-stretched inside the exhibition
space, unnecessary limitations are placed on the size
of the sculptural and otherwise rigid pieces that can
be shown. The store and access to the Douglas Hyde should
be a reminder that the unseen parts of an art space are
as important as the seen.
 |
|
Rem
Koolhaas: Guggenheim Museum Las Vegas, 2001,
interior view during the Art of the Motorcycle,
interior installation by Frank Gehry, photo and
courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
|
In Las Vegas,
Rem Koolhaas has done away with these difficulties and
limitations with a gesture on a scale to match the rest
of Vegas. The Guggenheim Las Vegas (2001), located within
the Venetian Hotel (which itself boasts a replica Grand
Canal, complete with water and gondola rides - inside,
and on the second floor...), includes a 74 by 74 ft pivoting
door, and a massive industrial bridge crane with a lifting
capacity of 35 tons. Subtle it's not, but one is left
with the impression (beloved of the new-breed Guggenheims)
that there's not much art that wouldn't fit in here.
Access aside,
the idea of the museum store still calls to mind the 'dormitory'
and 'morgue' cliches5 of
large collections, and while climate control and security
cannot be neglected, there is something disturbing about
taking a trip around a major museum's storage space. On
a pre-opening tour of MoMA QNS in New York last year,
the journey down through a series of deadening doors to
the caged areas, where MoMA's massive collection is now
located, was a disquieting experience. The cold, still
air, and racks upon racks of MoMA's contribution to the
canon of contemporary art made me think that perhaps,
were I an artist, I would be less than glad for my work
to be buried here.
Rem Koolhaas
considered the issue in his presentation to MoMA for their
extension and renovation project under the heading Storage
vs. Viewing:
A museum is an ambiguous
treasure house of collections: part is on view and accessible,
an often larger part is hidden in storage, aggressively
inaccessible... The museum is the only institution that
systematically freezes its assets away. Within the [MoMA]
extension, the notion of storage should be emancipated.
New forms of automated storage, visible storage, and robotic
retrieval eliminate arguments of difficult access, unwieldy
logistics, and impossibility. Combined with the appeal
for a more customized, individual museum experience, the
rethinking of storage initiates a new way of conceptualizing
the collection...6
Koolhaas's
ideas weren't adopted, perhaps due in part to the curators'
desire to see their growing role of interpreting through
presentation undiminished. Matisse
Picasso wouldn't have been such a lucrative block-buster
if people could create their own parallels within, and
conclusions about, a museum's collection. Storage is a
vital part of a museum's architecture, and yet until we
see innovators such as Koolhaas being given the opportunity
to experiment with the form and function of them, we can
expect little more from these spaces than air conditioned
racks of dead (or merely sleeping) works of art.
Back in the
public gaze, 39% of poll respondents thought that an impressive
entrance was a good thing for an art space to have. 57%
said that it made no difference, and 4% that it was actively
a bad thing. An impressive entrance is, of course, an
external manifestation of the internal atrium/foyer pyrotechnics
which were discussed in the previous essay in this series7.
The investment in two Guggenheim museums in Las Vegas
(the Guggenheim, and the Guggenheim Hermitage) renders
any vestiges of doubt that art is not yet an entertainment,
and as such in competition with other available entertainments,
void. Having said that, the recent news that the Guggenheim
Las Vegas is to close and the space turned into a theatre,
means that perhaps the terms of the competition need to
be addressed a little more closely if art is to win in
an environment like Vegas. The Vegas Guggenheim only had
one show in the Koolhaas space - the very long-running
Art of the Motorcycle. The Guggenheim Hermitage space
is to remain open, and the Guggenheim itself is turning
its attention instead to Rio, where they are planning
a new outpost on the beachfront (to a chorus of local
protest).
|
|
|
|
Michael
Maltazan Architecture and Cooper Robertson and Partners:
MoMA QNS, 2002,exterior and interior views,
photo Elizabeth Felicella courtesy and © The Museum
of Modern Art
|
|
|
|
|
Mario
Botta: SF MoMA, 1990-95, interior view, atrium,photo
Richard Barnes, courtesy and © SanFranciscoMuseum
of Modern Art
|
Frank
Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1997, interior
view,photo Erika Ede, courtesy Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao
|
An impressive
entrance, while speaking to the outside world of the kind
of experience that is available within, also sets the
mood that will characterise the visit once you have moved
beyond its doors. Santiago Calatrava's astonishing wing-like
brise-soleil at the Milwaukee Art Museum (1994-2000);
IM Pei's crystalline pyramids at the Louvre (1989); the
huge black-and-white striped oculus and entrance at the
Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (SF MoMA) (architect:
Mario Botta 1990-95) all advertise that something special
is on view within, something exciting, something different.
But when entrances in the museum-as-entertainment category
strive to outdo each other, what is the logical (or illogical)
conclusion?
The price
of unlimited diversification in the marketplace of culture-as-an-industry
is, first, accelerated disintegration, and then the total
collapse of all rules of the game that makes 'culture'
possible as a phenomenon that shares a common social goal.
And the result? Finally, we find ourselves inside a museum
unfit for use as such or else only fit to exhibit itself.8
The question
of how much of Calatrava's massive wing-span sun-screen,
Botta's black-and-grey striped stage set, or Gehry's titanium
arabesques you can leave behind in your mind when you
come face to face with a quieter work inside, is one that
only the individual can answer, but sometimes it can be
hard for a work to speak for itself when the conversation
has degenerated into a shouting match.
Leaving the
art space itself aside, for a moment, how do gift, book
and coffee shops fit into the contemporary art space?
35% approved of their presence, 19% thought that they
didn't make any difference, while 4% decided that they
had a negative effect on the museum experience. According
to Herzog and de Meuron (architects of Tate Modern, 1994-2000),
An art museum is a place
for art and people: it is not Disneyworld; it is not a
shopping mall; it is not a media center. It is a place
where the world of art can express itself in the most
direct and radical way - in spaces that find the approval
not only of architects and critics but of artists and
visitors, spaces that stimulate people to concentrate
on the perception of art...9
But art does
have a significant cultural value, and it is a value which
is increasingly commodified and conferred on the goods
available in gallery and museum gift, book and coffee
shops.
 |
|
Mario Botta: SF MoMA, 1990-95, interior view,looking
up at bridge, photo Richard Barnes,courtesy and
© SanFrancisco Museum of Modern Art
|
...museums
today are expanding into areas of social life such as
shopping, dining and attending the performing arts, hosting
receptions and parties. These commercial activities are
aestheticized by the museum site as well as by museum
packaging and logos, and promoted as pseudo-cultural products
and events.10
The problem
is that art does not necessarily have an unlimited and
renewing reserve of cultural value to confer before the
reciprocal nature of the exchange begins to have a negative
impact. American cultural commentator Rick Oravec asks,
"how many bad and overpriced cappuccinos do I have to
have in a museum cafe before I start to question the profit
motivations in the arena of the art that they are electing
to show as well?"11 He
alludes to the Saatchi Sensation exhibition which
managed to cause an advertising man's dream of an eponymous
sensation when it was shown in both London and New York.
Interestingly it was different works which were calculated
to provide the crowd-pulling outrage in each venue, but
it was perhaps the gift shop which showed what the show
was really up to12.
At the Brooklyn
Museum (the venue for Sensation in New York), toilet
rolls were sold wrapped around with yellow police crime-scene
tape, while tin lunchboxes, emblazoned with the legend
Toxic Biohazard were
available at similarly inflated prices. There were also
rubber balls which screamed when you bounced them off
the ground. Their connection to the exhibition was tenuous
at best. Oravec agrees that these things were fun to see
and buy, and there was no doubt as to the quality of much
of the work in the exhibition, "and yet the overriding
memory is that of a marketing opportunity, and the experience
of the gift shop uneasily usurped the experience of the
show in my memory of the visit."
Of course
art-viewing can be thirsty work, and tired feet need nice
places to rest. A well-stocked bookshop is a useful adjunct
to an exhibit, and we all love to send postcards. People
may have travelled considerable distances to visit a museum
or gallery, so cafés and restaurants are an important
component of the design. Yet increasingly the balance
seems to have been disrupted. To paraphrase Vreeland's
opening quotation above, we are being drowned in coffee
and commerce, with education (and indeed contemplation)
often coming a poor second. "An ace cafe with quite a
nice museum attached,"13
ran the V&A's memorable poster, and in the CIRCA poll,
over 50% of respondents (including myself) said that they
had visited a gallery or museum just for the gift shop
or café, and skipped the art altogether. This in itself
is not a problem, yet while we have investigated the cultural
issue, the one for architecture is that increasingly the
retail spaces are being given priority in briefings to
architects by museum boards with an eye to ancillary sources
of revenue. Arthur Rosenblatt, senior principal of RKK&G,
Museum and Cultural Facilities Consultants (a New York-based
office offering museum planning and design services worldwide)
is aware of the key importance of the role of the client
in briefing the architect. Quoting architectural historian
Nicholas Pevner, he notes that "...the guardian of functional
satisfaction is the client. His responsibility in briefing
is as great as the architect's in designing."14
The Millennium
Wing (architects: Benson and Forsyth, 2000-02) in Dublin's
National Gallery sees the Clare Street entrance bringing
you into an interior 'street' and past the large bookshop
and cafe en route to the steep stairs which will bring
the determined visitor up to the galleries. It was the
commissioning panel who specified the gallery/other usage
split, and here, as in New York's Met (original building:
Weston, 1880, and Morris Hunt, 1894; extensions and renovations
by Roche Dinkeloo, 1970-90), one's first impression is
of retail, with exhibitions appearing as a corollary to
that. The Metropolitan Museum has 12,500 square feet of
sales space in its Manhattan site, with another 38 retail
shops throughout the city, and worldwide15.
All the issues
discussed so far ought perhaps to be as secondary as a
coffee shop (in an ideal world) to the central issue of
what makes a good exhibition space. What makes the actual
gallery spaces ideal for viewing art - as distinct from
the other elements of the buildings which contain them?
Opinion in
the poll was fairly balanced across the different alternatives
of space. 'Free form' areas, 'traditional' spaces with
their original features, white cube and neutral spaces,
and spaces with logical room progressions were all considered
(statistics above). In fact, each 'type' of gallery has
examples which are so beautifully worked out and executed
that, when inside, one thinks that maybe all galleries
should be this way. And yet, how many are truly different,
original or experimental, and how many are merely architectural
cladding on the basic white space? Frank Lloyd Wright's
Guggenheim New York (1956-59), Frank Gehry's Guggenheim
Bilbao (1997), and Steven Holl's Kiasma in Helsinki (1998)
all experiment with spaces beyond the White Cube whose
mythology was so brilliantly explored and exploded by
Brian O'Doherty in his series of lectures of that name16.
Yet all return at various points to the bare white space
which is the basis of almost all contemporary museum design.
Indeed, beyond the drama of Botta's black-and-grey foyer
in San Francisco, and the façade of IMMA's conversion
(conversion architect; Shay Cleary, 1991), even once inside
the black basalt bulk of Vienna's MuMOK (architects: Ortner
& Ortner 2001), what we are left with, as we come
to the art spaces, are simple white rooms.
These rooms
are nothing approaching 'neutral', for as Michel Foucault
pointed out, space is never empty, but "always saturated
with qualities."17 So what
is the secret of that white space? What are its qualities?
Simplicity is one key element. A juror for the competition
to select the architects for Tate Modern, Michael Craig-Martin,
noted that "the apparent simplicity of Minimalist works
focuses attention without distraction on the straight-forward
reality of the object, the relation of the object to the
space in which it is seen, the relation of the viewer
to this experience."18
Thus, all services, such as wiring, plumbing, ducting,
are hidden away, and flooring and finishes are kept to
a minimal limit.
Yoshio Taniguchi,
the architect of MoMA's ongoing building project, recognises
the primacy of the art spaces, and describes the process
of creating these as "an interlocking dialogue of space,
art, and architecture."
The primary
objective in the design of a museum is to create the ideal
environment for the interaction of people and art. Galleries
and public spaces are the core elements in a museum. A
variety of gallery spaces appropriate to MoMA's collection
of twentieth-century masterworks, as well as new galleries
for the yet unknown works of contemporary art, is the
first requirement.19
|
|
|
|
Ortner
and Ortner: MuMOK, 2001, entrance hall and
exhibition area,photo and © Rupert Steiner, Museum
Quartier, Vienna
|
Taking up
the idea of what should constitute that ideal environment,
Steven Holl notes the importance of a quiet, intimate,
meditative aspect: "The origin of museum as a room of
the muse, a place to think and consider deeply and at
length, is an idea to contemplate as we are faced with
a major
 |
|
McCullough
Mulvin: Gallery 2 at the Douglas Hyde, 2000-01,
installation view,showing Kazuo Katase, The Paradise
3, courtsey the Douglas Hyde Gallery
|
transformation
of the Museum of Modern Art."20
It seems simple enough, yet how can it work so well in
one gallery, Gallery 2 at the Douglas Hyde for example,
and yet fail so sadly at the Project's art space in Temple
Bar, Dublin (architect: Shay Cleary, 2000). Niall McCullough
describes the process as being about:
(a) having a working understanding
of why the architecture should not come to dominate a
space... (b) that architecture by definition exists in
and around the art and will have form, and the challenge
for architects is to find a narrow - but infinitely interesting
- way between non-expression and over expression (my optimism
is based on a belief that this can be done); and (c) that
the basis for this lies - apart from the practicalities
of site and structure - in mathematics, proportion, light
- and circulation - how a room is entered/ exited etc.
It is also clearly to do with the external expression
of the building - what does it say about the content -
and how that is balanced against its physical and cultural
'place'.21
The final
article in this series will discuss further how that harmony
and balance can be created. It will examine conversions
vs. new-build spaces, and look at the work of 'celebrity'
architects in museum design - and also at what happens
when artists design their own museums.
Gemma
Tipton is a writer and jury member for the Heritage
Council Museum of the Year Awards 2003. This essay is
the third in a series of four, supported by the Arts Council/An
Chomhairle Ealaíon's Bursary in Contemporary Architectural
Criticism.
Article reproduced
from CIRCA 104, Summer 2003,
pp.62 -68.
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