The quarter is over, no one is on campus, the weather is springlike and it's almost Christmas. It is very strange. Some random thoughts about museum architecture...
1) Is a museum an "unheimlich" space? Is the strange attraction to museums a compulsive pull of both childhood excitement and the death drive? Is a museum both tomb and womb? Is the real reason for our wandering through the hallways of these ritual spaces only to dwell in the objects of (mostly dead) others? Is it then some kind of wandering wondering? Surely, "cultured" or "elite" is an inappropriate and overused term. Can a museum be something else? Can it be smokestack (Victoria and Albert) instead of ivory tower (British Museum)? or both (Cincinnati Art Museum)? If yesterdays grand palaces are todays ruins, what will become of our grand palaces? What is a hopeful way to practice?
2) What use is all this toward designing new spaces?
вторник, 19 декабря 2006 г.
понедельник, 20 ноября 2006 г.
O-H, I-O muthafucka
Surrealism becomes the midwest. I have been thinking about how the theories of European Surrealist Movement in the 1920s have become the reality of the American Midwest. I think that Midwestern society reflects this multiplicitous view on life better than any other area in the world. It is hopeful, layered, cheery, dark, death-filled, bright, stormy, etc. It has a blend of all the critical elements of a surrealist composition. I think that my interest in the theory behind surrealism is really driven by my own interest in defining my home. In this way, the uncanny returns in my own study. I am looking towards the unheimlich in my own experience to help direct my future actions. It is a dark pursuit. It is also a very rich one.
Ohio State beat Michigan yesterday. Cincinnati upset Rutgers. The Democrats now have the majority in both houses in Washington. President Bush is changing his tune. The Midwest is winning. Someone needs to map it. Fuck the coasts. Their time is through. They can enjoy the self-sustaining fashion of skin deep architecture and revolving door of trends and hipster status. The real meat of life, the real mess of American identity is in the middle of the country. Where tobacco barns have wireless internet, Campbell’s soup is required in almost every holiday recipe, War memorials, war protests, and war stickers litter the landscape, where people drive to the corner store, where grandmothers hide dark secrets and half-empty liquor bottles under their macrome baby’s blanket, where one god and one country still resonate and highschool sweethearts still fall in love and get married, Where ancient architecture, neither the dumbly catagorized “Fort Ancient” or a real “cosmologial map” cannot capture its real presence, exists within a mile of fast food restaurants, neither real food nor real restaurant. God Bless America. Bring the Troops Home. No Blood for Oil. The Midwest loves slogans, and it believes none of them. It evades every definition that you try to put on it. The coasts don’t understand the midwest. They imagine it only as a marginally interesting political battle ground for about two days of the year and more often as tedious gridded cornfields to fly over en route between NYC and LA. Jetsetters are not welcome in the Midwest. Silo cups and Wrangler jeans trump Armani and Louis Vuitton. Sure you can stop by for a beer, but you will never be called a good ole boy. When the revolution occurs, I know where it will be. O-H, I-O mothufucka.
Ohio State beat Michigan yesterday. Cincinnati upset Rutgers. The Democrats now have the majority in both houses in Washington. President Bush is changing his tune. The Midwest is winning. Someone needs to map it. Fuck the coasts. Their time is through. They can enjoy the self-sustaining fashion of skin deep architecture and revolving door of trends and hipster status. The real meat of life, the real mess of American identity is in the middle of the country. Where tobacco barns have wireless internet, Campbell’s soup is required in almost every holiday recipe, War memorials, war protests, and war stickers litter the landscape, where people drive to the corner store, where grandmothers hide dark secrets and half-empty liquor bottles under their macrome baby’s blanket, where one god and one country still resonate and highschool sweethearts still fall in love and get married, Where ancient architecture, neither the dumbly catagorized “Fort Ancient” or a real “cosmologial map” cannot capture its real presence, exists within a mile of fast food restaurants, neither real food nor real restaurant. God Bless America. Bring the Troops Home. No Blood for Oil. The Midwest loves slogans, and it believes none of them. It evades every definition that you try to put on it. The coasts don’t understand the midwest. They imagine it only as a marginally interesting political battle ground for about two days of the year and more often as tedious gridded cornfields to fly over en route between NYC and LA. Jetsetters are not welcome in the Midwest. Silo cups and Wrangler jeans trump Armani and Louis Vuitton. Sure you can stop by for a beer, but you will never be called a good ole boy. When the revolution occurs, I know where it will be. O-H, I-O mothufucka.
понедельник, 9 октября 2006 г.
Not an "Art Palace" after all
After returning to Cincinnati and doing some research in the Museum's library I discovered that my last posting will need to be edited. The Cincinnati Art Museum was never called the "Arts Palace of the West" by the international press. This label was invented by the Assistant Director of the Museum in 1981 to host the institution's centennial celebration exhibition. This exhibition was titled, "Cincinnati Art Museum: Art Palace of the West." Assistant Director Betty Zimmerman, who organized the show and authored its catalogue did not cite her sources when she made the following claim:
"The Cincinnati Art Museum building opens to international acclaim on May 17, with elaborate dedicatory ceremonies, the first general art museum west of the Alleghenies in its own building, and called "the Art Palace of the West" by the press" (Zimmerman 1981, 40).
The rest of her history is detailed and exhaustive. I used many sources from her bibliography, but I could not find the vague reference to "the press." The current Assistant director, the curator of the most recent exhibition on the museum's history, and the head librarian all could not cite the article. Finally, the head librarian claimed that for the fifteen or twenty years that she had been at the museum, neither she, nor anyone on the museum's staff could find documentation of this title.
This self-published catalogue claimed an historical title that it never actually had. Whether this is a result of a desire for sensationalism or self-glorification, the title has somehow become part of the museum itself. It is a very popular and often cited title. I think the museum is one of the best museums in the world. Its collection spans the entire breadth of human creativity. But its claims to a false history only hurt its image.
SOURCE: Zimmerman, Betty. Cincinnati Art Museum: Art Palace of the West. Cincinnati Art Museum: Cincinnati, 1981.
"The Cincinnati Art Museum building opens to international acclaim on May 17, with elaborate dedicatory ceremonies, the first general art museum west of the Alleghenies in its own building, and called "the Art Palace of the West" by the press" (Zimmerman 1981, 40).
The rest of her history is detailed and exhaustive. I used many sources from her bibliography, but I could not find the vague reference to "the press." The current Assistant director, the curator of the most recent exhibition on the museum's history, and the head librarian all could not cite the article. Finally, the head librarian claimed that for the fifteen or twenty years that she had been at the museum, neither she, nor anyone on the museum's staff could find documentation of this title.
This self-published catalogue claimed an historical title that it never actually had. Whether this is a result of a desire for sensationalism or self-glorification, the title has somehow become part of the museum itself. It is a very popular and often cited title. I think the museum is one of the best museums in the world. Its collection spans the entire breadth of human creativity. But its claims to a false history only hurt its image.
SOURCE: Zimmerman, Betty. Cincinnati Art Museum: Art Palace of the West. Cincinnati Art Museum: Cincinnati, 1981.
среда, 13 сентября 2006 г.
DRAFT - The Cincinnati Art Musem: From "Art Palace" to Architectural Problem.
Introduction
The Cincinnati Art Museum was described as the “Arts Palace of the West.” Today’s collection of buildings can hardly be considered a place and Cincinnati is nowhere near the West. The history of the CAM is an important example of how civic institutions evolve over time. The combined visions of generations of architects, directors, patrons, and pubic have resulted in a jumbled mess of architectural intentions.
1800-1885 - Beginnings - the art spirit in Cincinnati (fun and culture)
The first art museum in Cincinnati was the dream of a wealthy businessman. After making a fortune in real estate in the newly settled Northwest Purchase, Nicholas Longworth settled in Cincinnati and directed his efforts towards philanthropy. In 1812?? ... The idea of founding a museum was part of the pioneering spirit of founding a city. As the Cincinnati Assistant Director would express in the Museum’s 1981 Exhibition catalogue Art Palace of the West, “Unless and until a city can point to the presence of its own art museum, the level of its cultural maturity may be open to question” (56). While Longworth’s sponsorship of artists’ education was extremely helpful, his efforts of building a permanent house for the arts failed.
Other attempts soon followed. Dr. Daniel Drake started the Western Museum in 1818 to display both art and natural objects. The collection consisted of ???? Also founded in this time was Letton’s Museum and Frank’s Waxworks Museum, both of whose entertainment-driven displays provided competition with Drake’s Western Museum. Other significant artistic exhibitions included the display of panoramas or cycloramas. The Nigara Falls Panorama was just one of several traveling exhibitions of the early nineteenth century. The spectacle included a large canvas on mechanically spinning rollers unveiled a scenic oil painting of the natural wonder. A temporary building was created with a round interior wall holding the painting with a tall viewing platform at its center, and entry fee was charged. Over xxxx?? Cincinnatians attended the temporary show. In 1821, under the new direction of Joseph Dorfeuille, the more conservative Western Museum tried to keep up with such events by resorting to methods of “pandemoniums” and “tableaux based on Dante’s Inferno. ?? (Zimmerman 1981, 56). It too failed to survive.
These first museums in Cincinnati mixed cultural value with entertainment value. The trip to the museum was more popular spectacle than a refined ritual. The character of these early museums blended the European desire of classifying the world’s curiosities with a distinctive American desire for entertainment.
The Civil War erased any traces of these early institutions.
1874-1881 - Founding a Museum or Useful Work for Women
In 1874 the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee of Cincinnati (WCEC) was formed to help prepare for the upcoming centennial celebration in Philadelphia. The one hundred year celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence was to be commemorated with an industrial exhibition of American and international goods. The WCEC raised funds and prepared Cincinnati’s submissions to the show. In February 1875, the grouped organized a “Martha Washington Tea Party” where teacups and saucers decorated with American flags and the portraits and facsimile signatures of Martha and George Washington were sold as commemorative souvenirs. Thousands attended this “high point of the social season” and paid fifty cents to $1.50 per piece (Zimmerman 1981, 13). In May the group held a two day international bazaar called the “Carnival of Nations.” The event was held in Exposition Hall (location?). Although frivolous in nature, the event managed to raise over seven thousand dollars for the WCEC. (Zimmerman 1981, ???)
The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, commonly called the Centennial Exhibition, opened in May 1876 in Philadelphia. The purpose of the exhibition was to....?? The Cincinnati Room featured carved furniture, interior architectural elements, painted china, and needlework completed by female students under the direction of Benn Pitman of the University of Cincinnati School of Design and Henry L. Fry and his son William Henry Fry. The works received critical acclaim. In his Treasures of Art (1876) critic C. B. Norton wrote, “The wood-carving of the ladies of Cincinnati deserves wide remembrance, not alone for its exquisite beauty, . . . but because it gave signs of culture which are in themselves promise of future good to the nation” (49). In the age of industrial expositions, art was bound with manufacturing and nationalism. The comparison of goods on open exhibit allowed citizens to understand the status of their city or their nation. Cincinnati held twelve industrial exhibitions between 1870 and 1900.??? It is not unorthadox, then, that the WCEC used tea and patriotism to fund their entries into the Exhibition. The WCEC was not only fabricating manufactured goods for international display. They were fabricating identity for their city and nation.
In 1877, the WCEC decided to reform as an association dedicated “to advance women’s work, more particularly in the direction of industrial art” (Perry 1886, ??). (see note 11, 36, art palace). The desire to define socially acceptable work for women was at this point more important than the building of an art museum. Mrs. Perry, speaking to a committee for the establishment of an art museum stated:
The ladies are aware of the magnitude of the proposition to inaugurate successfully a movement for a museum, with its masterpieces of fine and industrial art, it library and training schools. They believe . . . it should be on a scale of completeness which would furnish thorough instruction in the various branches of fine and industrial art. (Zimmerman 1981, 17)
The Women’s Art Museum Association (WAMA), the successor of the WCEC was founded on April 28, 1877. Mrs. Perry was again elected president. The early members were women of prominent Cincinnati businessmen, including Mrs. John Shillito, wife of the successful department store owner. While it sponsored free lectures on art and industry, organized temporary exhibitions, and even provided classes in rented facilities, the WAMA began to define its ideal art museum.
At the time the model institution of art and industry was the South Kensington Museum in London, now the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Quite in opposition to the academic character of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum was founded with the explicit purpose of public education and service to the community. The exhibition halls were to be houses of model industrial goods. It was the museum’s mission to change the taste and preferences of English citizens through exhibitions and practical training. It itself was the descendent of an industrial exhibition, perhaps the most famous. The 1851 Industrial Exhibition with its revolutionary Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton took place in Hyde Park, not more than a half-mile from the Victoria and Albert’s present location. The foundation of the museum in 1857 is a result of the energy that this exhibition stimulated.
The philosophy of the Victoria and Albert Museum combined aesthetic taste and industrial production. The early mission was less about developing a refined art appreciation, but more about training future craftsmen. (Quotes). The museum was not only the exhibition halls; it included the school, lecture halls, and other auxiliary functions.
The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) used the Victoria and Albert Museum as its explicit model. The WAMA now expressed its desire for, “the establishment of a museum on the South Kensington plan, for objects of industrial art of all kinds, and schools of training for draughtsmen and designers” (Zimmerman 1981, 20/ WAMA scrapbook??) Soon to become the first director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Alfred Trader Goshorn (1833-1902) had a close relationship with Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen, director of the V&A. The two had collaborated during the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Goshen, who at one time had served as president of the Cincinnati Redlegs Baseball Company and the director of Cincinnati’s Second and Third Industrial Exhibitions was appointed the director of Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition. Sir Owen helped direct the display of the British galleries. The collaboration was so successful that Queen Victoria knighted Goshen and special act of the U.S. Congress was passed in order for Goshen to accept the royal title. Needless to say, by the time the University of Cincinnati’s School of Design was transferred to the control of the Museum Association in the 1880s, a well-known precedent was already in place.
The WAMA continued to instruct classes, hold exhibitions and petition for more support. At the Eight Cincinnati Industrial Exhibition in 1880, Charles W. West, (a businessman??), announced a donation of $150,000 to the foundation of an art museum to be matched by public subscription. The public responded. In less than a month, $161,000 was collected from citizens. Mayor Charles Jacob Jr. proclaimed Saturday October 9, 1880 as “Museum Day” and suggested that “all public offices be closed . . . and that all public and private buildings be decorated with flags.” (Cincinnati Gazette, Oct 8, 1880 - note 49 Zimmerman) Art, nationalism, education, and politics were all compressed in one day. The Cincinnati Museum Association was incorporated on February 15, 1881.
The establishment of an art museum in Cincinnati was a civic endeavor with the clear intentions for the improvement of material goods and general happiness of the citizens of the city. It was not a temple of the arts at its conception, but a practical school for the training of future artists and the enjoyment of city dwellers. Nationalist ideals and regional pride originally supported the idea of a museum. These clear foundations were soon challenged.
1881-1886 - Temple in the Garden
Three sites were proposed for the museum: Burnett Woods, Eden Park, and Washington Square. Burnett Woods and Eden Park offered pastoral settings for the future building, while Washington Square Park was in the dense city center. Already home to Music Hall (1879), the placement of an art museum at Washington Square would have created a strong arts center in the city. This location was favored by art museum subscriber Reuben Springer, who called the reservations about the industrial pollution and risk of damage to artwork to be nonsense. The only serious drawback was the buildings lack of future expansion in what was then one of the densest urban areas in the United States, a point that seems rather ironic today. The other locations were vacant tracts of land leftover from the fortunes of Cincinnati’s founding elite. Such locations would “prepare visitors spiritually for the experience of great art” (Zimmerman 1981, 27). Most of museum subscribers, who were financially capable of supporting a museum as well as choosing where to live, also left the congested city center for larger tracts of land in Cincinnati’s first suburbs. Reviewing the debate the American Art Review commented, “it cannot be doubted that some site on the hills that surround the city will be chosen” (Nov. 1880, 37).
The issue was put to vote on April 18, 1881. In a hardly democratic process, subscribers to the art museum voted according to the dollar amount of their donations. Eden Park received 75,828 votes, Burnet Woods, 13,658 votes, and Washington Square, 61,600 votes. Mr. Charles W. West did not cast his 150,000 votes and 12,500 others were not cast. (American Art Review 1881, 39). Because a three-fourths majority was required, the issue was again brought to a vote the following month. This time Eden Park received 260,681 votes, Washington Square, 21,560 votes, Burnet Woods 7,030 votes, and 25,330 votes were not cast (American Art Review 1881, 86). West cast his votes in favor of Eden Park, causing the first urban flight of a Cincinnati cultural institution. The decision to build an art museum in Eden Park was the choice of the highest bidder.
On a formal level, the decision to place the art museum in the park recalls a strong classically inspired history. The influence of the English garden, the references to the Parthenon, and ??? all were expressed sources for the placement of the Cincinnati museum. A series of modern additions to such classical plans make the project unique. To reach the museum, visitors needed to take an inclined rail journey up the hillside and then to the front steps of the museum. The journey took about twenty minutes. The placement of the museum in the park created the dramatic approach as the first architectural experience in the narrative of its space. The journey was preparation for the ritual.
1886-1907 - The First Buildings or Romantic versus Classical
Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin (1834-1923) was chosen to design the building. McLaughlin was the brother a Mary Louise McLaughlin, a respected leader in Cincinnati’s ceramic arts. He also was the head architect of several important city buildings, including the Gas and Coke Building, St. Francis Catholic Church, Bell Block, the old Carew Building, and a large house for Goshen on Clifton Avenue. Besides his deisgns for the art museum complex, McLaughlin’s most famous work was for department stores. He designed the old Shillito’s department store (1860??), later McGalpin’s department store and now a new condo unit on Fourth Street. His 1880? design for a six-story tall, skylit department store on Seventh and Race street was the most famous Cincinnati building of its time and still is referenced in several surverys of modern architecture. The design of Shillito’s second department store revolutionized the shopping experience. The building provided a unique interior environment of casual browsing, layered experience, and urban retreat. Surely it helped that McLaughlin’s father was Shillito’s partner, but the architect’s creative abilities exceeded any political trivia.
McLaughlin’s first concept was for adjoining east and west buildings facing south towards the Ohio River. The symmetrical building was inspired by Medieval French and Italian churches. (Past on View - ) This choice of an architecture precedent was significant, if accidentally so. McLauglin, the experienced designer of space for the developing American shopping rituals used the form of religious rituals to inform his creation of a new space for art. The blending of the old and the new and layering of monumental form with contemporary needs demonstrates McLaughlin’s significant understanding of the synthetic nature of architectural design. It is unknown whether he understood the deep typological roots between shopping, religious ritual, and museums, but McLaughlin is an example of the early convergence of these forces.
McLaughlin’s romantic concept was much more ambitious than the museum could afford. Only the western half was built in 1886 when the museum opened. This included the grand skylit central staircase, long arch-roofed west wing, and winding front steps. The “Florentine Romanesque” detailing was stripped down to much simpler version and the east facade was left bare brick for future expansion.
But McLaughlin did not stop there. When funds became available, he also designed the Art Academy Building, modeling it on the Rene Mackintosh School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland (Source - museum pamphlet). The buildings were decidedly separate, but McLaughlin already sketched his ideas for a masterplan for future expansion. Included in this was the completion of the eastern wing, a tall clock tower, domed rotunda for a library, octagonal pavilions and a loggia with a view of Eden Park. The vision was asymmetrically balanced and had a clear logic to the layout of spaces. This was an open-ended cultural complex in the park unique in details and romantic in spirit.
When the museum did expand, McLaughlin’s plans were abandoned. Jacob Schmidlapp gave money for a new wing in honor of the tragic death of his daughter in a railroad accident. Schmidlapp personally appointed prominent Chicago architect Daniel Burnham to design the new wing. Burnham was working at the time for Schmidlapp on the design of a skyscraper for the Union Savings and Trust Company. With his partner Ernest Graham, Burnham designed a Doric Greek temple.
The design was totally unlike anything else on the hill. The Doric Greek detailing paled in comparison to McLaughlin’s more complex detailing, the plain white stone clashed with the warmer tones of McLaughlin’s buildings, the new addition totally reversed the focus of the museum from a southward to a northward gesture, and it blatantly ignored the details of the existing building. The only sense of synthesis in Burnham’s design was its axial relationship with large central space of the original building. Still, this was only created by extending a rather plain stone box several hundred feet from the main building to grant sufficient room for the Greek temple to exist in the round. In order to access the new Schmidlapp Wing, the grand stair needed to be dismantled and rebuilt to provide an opening. Although this line of axis is one of the clearest features of the museum today, its creation was a clear break with the original intentions of the complex. I suspect Burnham’s design to have been a lazy effort by a second or third-rate architect at Burnham’s then overwhelmed studio. The CAM has yet to recover from this parasitic and unsympathetic design.
1907-1937 - Cleaning up the Mess
In 1910 a small addition called the Ropes Wing was added to the north of McLaughlin’s original building. The Cincinnati firm of Garber and Woodward completed this space for additional exhibition space. Garber and Woodward’s efforts were soon multiplied when they were hired to deign a new complex of wings to house collections of Mrs. ??? Emery, Henry and Mary Jane Hanna, and Herbert Greer French. When finally completed in 1930, the Emery, Hanna, and French Wings finally linked the original building with the Art Academy and enclosed a small central courtyard. The museum now was a complete circuit.
Garber and Woodward’s additions, although completed over three years of construction and each designed for different clients, are an attempt to glue together the disparate buildings. Their 1910 Ropes Wing combined with their 1930 buildings to enclose the 100 feet by 50 feet??? Garden Court in an internally consistent neo-classical aesthetic. The white stone walls, Doric columns, and classical details attempted to provide symmetry with the 1907 Schmidlapp Wing. The creation of another great hall in the French Wing attempts to balance the other two competing large spaces. The first and second floors were used as exhibition spaces and the ground level was used for storage.
Quite sensitive in intention, but rather poor in execution was the outward facing western facade of the Emery Wing. This building linked the original museum with the Art Academy. Garber and Woodward did not design a neo-classical facade, but used a plain brick surface with punched windows and a few scuppers as the only detailing. While the interior Garden Court balance the old and the new, the exterior facing facade of the Emery Wing seemed a leftover area or a forgotten opportunity. The architects had, perhaps, intended this area to be room for future expansion (personal interview - Rubb).
Only seven years later in1937, a new wing opened. The Frederick H. and Eleanora U. Alms Wing designed by Cincinnati firm Rendigs, Panzer and Martin was built to complement the original western wing of the Art Museum. The addition included a large auditorium at the ground level, a library, and offices on the first floor, and more skylit exhibition space on the second floor. The facade was detailed to mirror McLaughlin’s details. The stone quarry used for the original building was even reopened to ensure that the stone matched.
Such efforts to make this new design look like it had always been there are interesting. While the architects went to such great lengths to mimic the then fifty year-old art museum building, they interpreted their own version of McLaughlin’s design. Instead of following McLaughlin’s plan for an asymmetrical building, Rendigs, Panzer and Martin simply mirrored the western wing. The interior spaces shifted only slightly from the original layout. The exterior was an exact, but historically inaccurate replica.
1937-1965 - Convenience over Narrative
Between the opening of the Alms Wing and the next major building project, a significant reorganization changed the orientation of the art museum complex. By the mid-1940s, automobiles had replaced rail transit as the preferred method of transportation. The museum that once faced south towards the Ohio River and received visitors directly on a rail line that stopped at the front door, decided it need to accommodate the new needs of its modern visitors. The October 1948 “Cincinnati Art Museum News” included the cover story “Museum’s New Approach: Enlarged Parking Area.”
“It is symbolic of what some people have called the Museum’s ‘new approach’ to presenting works of art. For by bringing visitors immediately into the Museum’s sculpture gallery, with no preliminary walk through a reception hall, it is bringing the visitor closer to what the Museum has to show, and it is hoped this new approach will bring those works of art and civilization closer to the visitor” (1948, ii)
The “symbolic” nature of this gesture was quite the opposite. Besides the incredible lack of understanding of visitor needs by proposing immediate submersion into the collection, the reorientation of the building into a north-facing entrance totally reversed the intended order of the museum experience. While Burnham’s 1907 Schmidlapp Wing was a poor complement to McLaughlin’s original masterplan, it at least could be understood as a quirky, but not totally disruptive addition to the building’s main theme. The subsequent additions even soften this jarring relationship. However, when the north side of the hill was leveled, asphalt laid, and diagonal parking spots painted, the narrative sequence was totally changed. Far from the spiritual preparation that once made Eden Park an idyllic museum site, the 1948 parking lot proudly sacrificed poetic and narrative order for “fewer steps to climb” (Cincinnati Art Museum News 1948, ii). In 1952, as part of continued interior renovations, the grand stair was removed and double height space of the Great Hall was floored over to provide even more display space.
The effect of these changes were amplified by the 1965 Adams-Emery Wing. By far the largest addition project of the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Adams-Emery Wing completely concealed the south facade of the McLaughlin building and the complementary Alms Wing. The new wing added fifty percent more gallery space and a list of new amenities. The ground floor had a new lecture hall, social halls, restaurant, and offices for the Cincinnati Historical Society. The first floor exhibition spaces were used for decorative arts and period rooms. The second floor had expanded galleries for the permanent collection and a larger space for temporary exhibitions.
This architectural intervention followed the strong functionalist philosophy that built the new parking lot and did irreprible damage to the museum complex. The aesthetic principles that directed the museum’s growth were convenience and growth. Describing the newly opened wing, Toledo Blade Art Editor Louise Bruner wrote, “The exterior is hardly an architect’s dream” (1965, G4). The sheer face of smooth white stone were pierced by tiny slit windows only at intermitten spots and the single plane of stone was varied by only the slightest hint of vertical joints. The amplified mullions on the ground floor windows signaled the location of the Historical Society offices, but seemed quite out of place. While the attempt here seems to be to create the effect of the early modernist universal floating white box, the result is rather haphazard. Bruner concludes, “the exterior blend of past and present is something to be proud of” (1965, G4). But how can one call the complete concealment a “blend”?
The interior was not any better. While the visitor once arrived in a large central space and then dispersed to radiating wings, the flooring over of this space broke the internal logic of the building. The grand stair, once the poetic ascent into the skylit upper galleries was demolished. By now, the Schmidlapp Wing was used as the main entrance. While exceedingly simple on the exterior, the interior was overwhelmingly complex. The building’s structure was a simplistic 12 foot by 12 foot steel frame grid, the architect’s managed to fit it out with the most confusing of interior spaces. Irregular shaped rooms were randomly inserted, dead end niches were created, and not a single datum or axis was adopted from the old galleries. To add to the misery of these spaces, the architect covered all the original large south-facing windows and replaced the naturally lit gallery spaces with totally enclosed electric lit boxes.
1967-2005 - Introspective Changes
The 1967 Adams-Emery Wing was the Cincinnati Art Museum’s last major building project. The 1992 internal remodeling by Glaser Associates of Cincinnati softened some of the poor effects. It removed the floor in the Great Hall and opened up the third floor studio space to create a new triple height space. The grand stair was put back, only in a new, north-facing version. Some of original walls were uncovered. Although the design did include some historicist details, such as the arched area at the top of the new grand stair, Glaser and Associates interior renovations greatly improved the visitor experience by creating a more synthetic internal arrangement.
This momentum was carried forward in 2003 by the Cincinnati Wing completed by KZF Designs of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Wing was the internal remodeling of the first floor of the Adams-Emery Wing. The decorative arts and period rooms were all removed and placed into storage and replaced by the growing collection of works by Cincinnati artists. In 2003, Procter and Gamble donated a substantial amount of paintings by Cincinnati artists from corporate art collection. This donation allowed the museum to rethink the internal layout again. KZF did its best to make the Adams-Emery Wing work as gallery space. They punched windows in the facade to allow daylight in for the first time, created a central axis from the main entrance, and arranged their gallery spaces on a very conservative sequence of similarly sized rooms. Along with the relocation of the cafe into a more central area and the new landscaping in the Garden Court, the Cincinnati Wing managed to create a more comfortable and pleasurable museum sequence.
2006 - Today’s Problem
Today, the museum is again faced with a major architectural problem. Timothy Rubb, the CAM Director between 2001 and 2006 claimed the major problem with the complex was that there was simply too much exhibition space and not enough room for all the other activities that a museum needs (personal interview). The three major challenges outlined in the Museum’s 2005 annual report titled Framing the Future were purely architectural.
“The Museum building was built incrementally, and there is no coherent architectural style, nor is there a coherent circulation pattern for visitors.
Many parts of the building are more than 100 years old, and they were built to serve different purposes than how Museums operate now.
Most of the more than 240,000 square feet of space in the building were built during the Museum’s first 80 years (1881-1962). There have been no significant additions to the structure in more than 40 years. Since the latest addition in 1962, our collection, staff, visitorship have grown significantly. In turn, demands on the facility have increased, and the current structure no longer serves the needs of our visitors.” (Annual Report 2005, 30)
The museum surely still served the needs of the visitor; it just did not serve the needs well. Circulation patterns, building functions, and new visitor needs require modernization. As museums worldwide went through a revolution of redesigns, additions, and expansions, the CAM remained relatively stable. All architectural efforts of the last twenty years have been to repair the damage of the previous forty years.
To complicate the problem in 2005, the Art Academy vacated its building and moved to an industrial loft space downtown. In 1973 the Art Academy and Museum administrations separated to allow the Academy to offer an accredited Bachelor of Arts degree in fine art. (Check this - is it a state or national requirement to have an independent administration?) The two institutions retained the same board of trustees. However, what CAM Director Barbara Gibbs described as “complexity of governance” led to the 1995 separation of the board of trustees. With an independent board and administration, the Art Academy no longer was attached to the museum. Teaching art no longer relies on viewing art in museums, and viewing art in museums no longer defines education as a strictly pedegogical experience. For better or for worse, the cultivation of individual vision and the provision of “infotainment” have redefined the once combined educational interests of the Academy and the Museum.
What is left is the building, the ruins of a not so distant past. The Art Academy is the only remaining visible structure from McLaughlin’s original designs. Although it went through extensive renovations in the 1950s, the exterior remained very much the way the architect had intended it. It is still very much the romantic, ivy-covered building McLaughlin drew 125 years ago.
Conclusion
The “art spirit” of Cincinnati was fed by private interests. While the Cincinnatians have always attended exhibitions that created the biggest spectacle, the CAM ignored the nature of the public by insisting of a cultivation of high art of a European decent. It seems rather simple to say, but money and the aesthetic taste of those with money were the determining factors in the foundation, development, and current position of the institution. As it developed, the building became less the all-encompassing arts institution envisioned by the WAMA and more the private monuments of elite Cincinnatians.
Today, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the “Art Palace of the West” is an architectural mess. It can no longer be described as a “palace” and it is nowhere near the West. McLaughlin’s original buildings may have been revolutionary in his own time by creating the “first purpose-built museum west of the Allegannies” (source?), but the only revolution possible today would be to increase the number of modifiers to the word museum. (perhaps first free-standing museum in the U.S. to be designed by a woman - CAC??) Unless the museum wishes to revel in its past, it will shed any nostalgic attachment to grandeur and make the most of the opportunities that exist today. The way forward is not in an attempt to recover an idealized past, but in the new combination of elements that make the museum a special place for the future.
In 2006 the CAM’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a twenty-year Facilities Master Plan. Completed by the New York architectural firm Cooper Robertson and Partners, the new master plan adds much needed amenities to the museum complex. The design includes a new parking structure, larger temporary exhibition space, relocation of the shop and cafe, and an expanded education center. Although it prescribes no final architectural order, the most controversial issue in the new master plan is the proposed demolition of the Art Academy building. The Cincinnati Preservation Society was dismayed at this decision and currently lists the building as “endangered.” The Society asks for support to “help develop a workable plan for reuse of this Cincinnati architectural and cultural treasure” (CPS 2006, 8).
Perhaps something better can be done?
The Cincinnati Art Museum was described as the “Arts Palace of the West.” Today’s collection of buildings can hardly be considered a place and Cincinnati is nowhere near the West. The history of the CAM is an important example of how civic institutions evolve over time. The combined visions of generations of architects, directors, patrons, and pubic have resulted in a jumbled mess of architectural intentions.
1800-1885 - Beginnings - the art spirit in Cincinnati (fun and culture)
The first art museum in Cincinnati was the dream of a wealthy businessman. After making a fortune in real estate in the newly settled Northwest Purchase, Nicholas Longworth settled in Cincinnati and directed his efforts towards philanthropy. In 1812?? ... The idea of founding a museum was part of the pioneering spirit of founding a city. As the Cincinnati Assistant Director would express in the Museum’s 1981 Exhibition catalogue Art Palace of the West, “Unless and until a city can point to the presence of its own art museum, the level of its cultural maturity may be open to question” (56). While Longworth’s sponsorship of artists’ education was extremely helpful, his efforts of building a permanent house for the arts failed.
Other attempts soon followed. Dr. Daniel Drake started the Western Museum in 1818 to display both art and natural objects. The collection consisted of ???? Also founded in this time was Letton’s Museum and Frank’s Waxworks Museum, both of whose entertainment-driven displays provided competition with Drake’s Western Museum. Other significant artistic exhibitions included the display of panoramas or cycloramas. The Nigara Falls Panorama was just one of several traveling exhibitions of the early nineteenth century. The spectacle included a large canvas on mechanically spinning rollers unveiled a scenic oil painting of the natural wonder. A temporary building was created with a round interior wall holding the painting with a tall viewing platform at its center, and entry fee was charged. Over xxxx?? Cincinnatians attended the temporary show. In 1821, under the new direction of Joseph Dorfeuille, the more conservative Western Museum tried to keep up with such events by resorting to methods of “pandemoniums” and “tableaux based on Dante’s Inferno. ?? (Zimmerman 1981, 56). It too failed to survive.
These first museums in Cincinnati mixed cultural value with entertainment value. The trip to the museum was more popular spectacle than a refined ritual. The character of these early museums blended the European desire of classifying the world’s curiosities with a distinctive American desire for entertainment.
The Civil War erased any traces of these early institutions.
1874-1881 - Founding a Museum or Useful Work for Women
In 1874 the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee of Cincinnati (WCEC) was formed to help prepare for the upcoming centennial celebration in Philadelphia. The one hundred year celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence was to be commemorated with an industrial exhibition of American and international goods. The WCEC raised funds and prepared Cincinnati’s submissions to the show. In February 1875, the grouped organized a “Martha Washington Tea Party” where teacups and saucers decorated with American flags and the portraits and facsimile signatures of Martha and George Washington were sold as commemorative souvenirs. Thousands attended this “high point of the social season” and paid fifty cents to $1.50 per piece (Zimmerman 1981, 13). In May the group held a two day international bazaar called the “Carnival of Nations.” The event was held in Exposition Hall (location?). Although frivolous in nature, the event managed to raise over seven thousand dollars for the WCEC. (Zimmerman 1981, ???)
The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, commonly called the Centennial Exhibition, opened in May 1876 in Philadelphia. The purpose of the exhibition was to....?? The Cincinnati Room featured carved furniture, interior architectural elements, painted china, and needlework completed by female students under the direction of Benn Pitman of the University of Cincinnati School of Design and Henry L. Fry and his son William Henry Fry. The works received critical acclaim. In his Treasures of Art (1876) critic C. B. Norton wrote, “The wood-carving of the ladies of Cincinnati deserves wide remembrance, not alone for its exquisite beauty, . . . but because it gave signs of culture which are in themselves promise of future good to the nation” (49). In the age of industrial expositions, art was bound with manufacturing and nationalism. The comparison of goods on open exhibit allowed citizens to understand the status of their city or their nation. Cincinnati held twelve industrial exhibitions between 1870 and 1900.??? It is not unorthadox, then, that the WCEC used tea and patriotism to fund their entries into the Exhibition. The WCEC was not only fabricating manufactured goods for international display. They were fabricating identity for their city and nation.
In 1877, the WCEC decided to reform as an association dedicated “to advance women’s work, more particularly in the direction of industrial art” (Perry 1886, ??). (see note 11, 36, art palace). The desire to define socially acceptable work for women was at this point more important than the building of an art museum. Mrs. Perry, speaking to a committee for the establishment of an art museum stated:
The ladies are aware of the magnitude of the proposition to inaugurate successfully a movement for a museum, with its masterpieces of fine and industrial art, it library and training schools. They believe . . . it should be on a scale of completeness which would furnish thorough instruction in the various branches of fine and industrial art. (Zimmerman 1981, 17)
The Women’s Art Museum Association (WAMA), the successor of the WCEC was founded on April 28, 1877. Mrs. Perry was again elected president. The early members were women of prominent Cincinnati businessmen, including Mrs. John Shillito, wife of the successful department store owner. While it sponsored free lectures on art and industry, organized temporary exhibitions, and even provided classes in rented facilities, the WAMA began to define its ideal art museum.
At the time the model institution of art and industry was the South Kensington Museum in London, now the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Quite in opposition to the academic character of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum was founded with the explicit purpose of public education and service to the community. The exhibition halls were to be houses of model industrial goods. It was the museum’s mission to change the taste and preferences of English citizens through exhibitions and practical training. It itself was the descendent of an industrial exhibition, perhaps the most famous. The 1851 Industrial Exhibition with its revolutionary Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton took place in Hyde Park, not more than a half-mile from the Victoria and Albert’s present location. The foundation of the museum in 1857 is a result of the energy that this exhibition stimulated.
The philosophy of the Victoria and Albert Museum combined aesthetic taste and industrial production. The early mission was less about developing a refined art appreciation, but more about training future craftsmen. (Quotes). The museum was not only the exhibition halls; it included the school, lecture halls, and other auxiliary functions.
The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) used the Victoria and Albert Museum as its explicit model. The WAMA now expressed its desire for, “the establishment of a museum on the South Kensington plan, for objects of industrial art of all kinds, and schools of training for draughtsmen and designers” (Zimmerman 1981, 20/ WAMA scrapbook??) Soon to become the first director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Alfred Trader Goshorn (1833-1902) had a close relationship with Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen, director of the V&A. The two had collaborated during the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Goshen, who at one time had served as president of the Cincinnati Redlegs Baseball Company and the director of Cincinnati’s Second and Third Industrial Exhibitions was appointed the director of Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition. Sir Owen helped direct the display of the British galleries. The collaboration was so successful that Queen Victoria knighted Goshen and special act of the U.S. Congress was passed in order for Goshen to accept the royal title. Needless to say, by the time the University of Cincinnati’s School of Design was transferred to the control of the Museum Association in the 1880s, a well-known precedent was already in place.
The WAMA continued to instruct classes, hold exhibitions and petition for more support. At the Eight Cincinnati Industrial Exhibition in 1880, Charles W. West, (a businessman??), announced a donation of $150,000 to the foundation of an art museum to be matched by public subscription. The public responded. In less than a month, $161,000 was collected from citizens. Mayor Charles Jacob Jr. proclaimed Saturday October 9, 1880 as “Museum Day” and suggested that “all public offices be closed . . . and that all public and private buildings be decorated with flags.” (Cincinnati Gazette, Oct 8, 1880 - note 49 Zimmerman) Art, nationalism, education, and politics were all compressed in one day. The Cincinnati Museum Association was incorporated on February 15, 1881.
The establishment of an art museum in Cincinnati was a civic endeavor with the clear intentions for the improvement of material goods and general happiness of the citizens of the city. It was not a temple of the arts at its conception, but a practical school for the training of future artists and the enjoyment of city dwellers. Nationalist ideals and regional pride originally supported the idea of a museum. These clear foundations were soon challenged.
1881-1886 - Temple in the Garden
Three sites were proposed for the museum: Burnett Woods, Eden Park, and Washington Square. Burnett Woods and Eden Park offered pastoral settings for the future building, while Washington Square Park was in the dense city center. Already home to Music Hall (1879), the placement of an art museum at Washington Square would have created a strong arts center in the city. This location was favored by art museum subscriber Reuben Springer, who called the reservations about the industrial pollution and risk of damage to artwork to be nonsense. The only serious drawback was the buildings lack of future expansion in what was then one of the densest urban areas in the United States, a point that seems rather ironic today. The other locations were vacant tracts of land leftover from the fortunes of Cincinnati’s founding elite. Such locations would “prepare visitors spiritually for the experience of great art” (Zimmerman 1981, 27). Most of museum subscribers, who were financially capable of supporting a museum as well as choosing where to live, also left the congested city center for larger tracts of land in Cincinnati’s first suburbs. Reviewing the debate the American Art Review commented, “it cannot be doubted that some site on the hills that surround the city will be chosen” (Nov. 1880, 37).
The issue was put to vote on April 18, 1881. In a hardly democratic process, subscribers to the art museum voted according to the dollar amount of their donations. Eden Park received 75,828 votes, Burnet Woods, 13,658 votes, and Washington Square, 61,600 votes. Mr. Charles W. West did not cast his 150,000 votes and 12,500 others were not cast. (American Art Review 1881, 39). Because a three-fourths majority was required, the issue was again brought to a vote the following month. This time Eden Park received 260,681 votes, Washington Square, 21,560 votes, Burnet Woods 7,030 votes, and 25,330 votes were not cast (American Art Review 1881, 86). West cast his votes in favor of Eden Park, causing the first urban flight of a Cincinnati cultural institution. The decision to build an art museum in Eden Park was the choice of the highest bidder.
On a formal level, the decision to place the art museum in the park recalls a strong classically inspired history. The influence of the English garden, the references to the Parthenon, and ??? all were expressed sources for the placement of the Cincinnati museum. A series of modern additions to such classical plans make the project unique. To reach the museum, visitors needed to take an inclined rail journey up the hillside and then to the front steps of the museum. The journey took about twenty minutes. The placement of the museum in the park created the dramatic approach as the first architectural experience in the narrative of its space. The journey was preparation for the ritual.
1886-1907 - The First Buildings or Romantic versus Classical
Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin (1834-1923) was chosen to design the building. McLaughlin was the brother a Mary Louise McLaughlin, a respected leader in Cincinnati’s ceramic arts. He also was the head architect of several important city buildings, including the Gas and Coke Building, St. Francis Catholic Church, Bell Block, the old Carew Building, and a large house for Goshen on Clifton Avenue. Besides his deisgns for the art museum complex, McLaughlin’s most famous work was for department stores. He designed the old Shillito’s department store (1860??), later McGalpin’s department store and now a new condo unit on Fourth Street. His 1880? design for a six-story tall, skylit department store on Seventh and Race street was the most famous Cincinnati building of its time and still is referenced in several surverys of modern architecture. The design of Shillito’s second department store revolutionized the shopping experience. The building provided a unique interior environment of casual browsing, layered experience, and urban retreat. Surely it helped that McLaughlin’s father was Shillito’s partner, but the architect’s creative abilities exceeded any political trivia.
McLaughlin’s first concept was for adjoining east and west buildings facing south towards the Ohio River. The symmetrical building was inspired by Medieval French and Italian churches. (Past on View - ) This choice of an architecture precedent was significant, if accidentally so. McLauglin, the experienced designer of space for the developing American shopping rituals used the form of religious rituals to inform his creation of a new space for art. The blending of the old and the new and layering of monumental form with contemporary needs demonstrates McLaughlin’s significant understanding of the synthetic nature of architectural design. It is unknown whether he understood the deep typological roots between shopping, religious ritual, and museums, but McLaughlin is an example of the early convergence of these forces.
McLaughlin’s romantic concept was much more ambitious than the museum could afford. Only the western half was built in 1886 when the museum opened. This included the grand skylit central staircase, long arch-roofed west wing, and winding front steps. The “Florentine Romanesque” detailing was stripped down to much simpler version and the east facade was left bare brick for future expansion.
But McLaughlin did not stop there. When funds became available, he also designed the Art Academy Building, modeling it on the Rene Mackintosh School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland (Source - museum pamphlet). The buildings were decidedly separate, but McLaughlin already sketched his ideas for a masterplan for future expansion. Included in this was the completion of the eastern wing, a tall clock tower, domed rotunda for a library, octagonal pavilions and a loggia with a view of Eden Park. The vision was asymmetrically balanced and had a clear logic to the layout of spaces. This was an open-ended cultural complex in the park unique in details and romantic in spirit.
When the museum did expand, McLaughlin’s plans were abandoned. Jacob Schmidlapp gave money for a new wing in honor of the tragic death of his daughter in a railroad accident. Schmidlapp personally appointed prominent Chicago architect Daniel Burnham to design the new wing. Burnham was working at the time for Schmidlapp on the design of a skyscraper for the Union Savings and Trust Company. With his partner Ernest Graham, Burnham designed a Doric Greek temple.
The design was totally unlike anything else on the hill. The Doric Greek detailing paled in comparison to McLaughlin’s more complex detailing, the plain white stone clashed with the warmer tones of McLaughlin’s buildings, the new addition totally reversed the focus of the museum from a southward to a northward gesture, and it blatantly ignored the details of the existing building. The only sense of synthesis in Burnham’s design was its axial relationship with large central space of the original building. Still, this was only created by extending a rather plain stone box several hundred feet from the main building to grant sufficient room for the Greek temple to exist in the round. In order to access the new Schmidlapp Wing, the grand stair needed to be dismantled and rebuilt to provide an opening. Although this line of axis is one of the clearest features of the museum today, its creation was a clear break with the original intentions of the complex. I suspect Burnham’s design to have been a lazy effort by a second or third-rate architect at Burnham’s then overwhelmed studio. The CAM has yet to recover from this parasitic and unsympathetic design.
1907-1937 - Cleaning up the Mess
In 1910 a small addition called the Ropes Wing was added to the north of McLaughlin’s original building. The Cincinnati firm of Garber and Woodward completed this space for additional exhibition space. Garber and Woodward’s efforts were soon multiplied when they were hired to deign a new complex of wings to house collections of Mrs. ??? Emery, Henry and Mary Jane Hanna, and Herbert Greer French. When finally completed in 1930, the Emery, Hanna, and French Wings finally linked the original building with the Art Academy and enclosed a small central courtyard. The museum now was a complete circuit.
Garber and Woodward’s additions, although completed over three years of construction and each designed for different clients, are an attempt to glue together the disparate buildings. Their 1910 Ropes Wing combined with their 1930 buildings to enclose the 100 feet by 50 feet??? Garden Court in an internally consistent neo-classical aesthetic. The white stone walls, Doric columns, and classical details attempted to provide symmetry with the 1907 Schmidlapp Wing. The creation of another great hall in the French Wing attempts to balance the other two competing large spaces. The first and second floors were used as exhibition spaces and the ground level was used for storage.
Quite sensitive in intention, but rather poor in execution was the outward facing western facade of the Emery Wing. This building linked the original museum with the Art Academy. Garber and Woodward did not design a neo-classical facade, but used a plain brick surface with punched windows and a few scuppers as the only detailing. While the interior Garden Court balance the old and the new, the exterior facing facade of the Emery Wing seemed a leftover area or a forgotten opportunity. The architects had, perhaps, intended this area to be room for future expansion (personal interview - Rubb).
Only seven years later in1937, a new wing opened. The Frederick H. and Eleanora U. Alms Wing designed by Cincinnati firm Rendigs, Panzer and Martin was built to complement the original western wing of the Art Museum. The addition included a large auditorium at the ground level, a library, and offices on the first floor, and more skylit exhibition space on the second floor. The facade was detailed to mirror McLaughlin’s details. The stone quarry used for the original building was even reopened to ensure that the stone matched.
Such efforts to make this new design look like it had always been there are interesting. While the architects went to such great lengths to mimic the then fifty year-old art museum building, they interpreted their own version of McLaughlin’s design. Instead of following McLaughlin’s plan for an asymmetrical building, Rendigs, Panzer and Martin simply mirrored the western wing. The interior spaces shifted only slightly from the original layout. The exterior was an exact, but historically inaccurate replica.
1937-1965 - Convenience over Narrative
Between the opening of the Alms Wing and the next major building project, a significant reorganization changed the orientation of the art museum complex. By the mid-1940s, automobiles had replaced rail transit as the preferred method of transportation. The museum that once faced south towards the Ohio River and received visitors directly on a rail line that stopped at the front door, decided it need to accommodate the new needs of its modern visitors. The October 1948 “Cincinnati Art Museum News” included the cover story “Museum’s New Approach: Enlarged Parking Area.”
“It is symbolic of what some people have called the Museum’s ‘new approach’ to presenting works of art. For by bringing visitors immediately into the Museum’s sculpture gallery, with no preliminary walk through a reception hall, it is bringing the visitor closer to what the Museum has to show, and it is hoped this new approach will bring those works of art and civilization closer to the visitor” (1948, ii)
The “symbolic” nature of this gesture was quite the opposite. Besides the incredible lack of understanding of visitor needs by proposing immediate submersion into the collection, the reorientation of the building into a north-facing entrance totally reversed the intended order of the museum experience. While Burnham’s 1907 Schmidlapp Wing was a poor complement to McLaughlin’s original masterplan, it at least could be understood as a quirky, but not totally disruptive addition to the building’s main theme. The subsequent additions even soften this jarring relationship. However, when the north side of the hill was leveled, asphalt laid, and diagonal parking spots painted, the narrative sequence was totally changed. Far from the spiritual preparation that once made Eden Park an idyllic museum site, the 1948 parking lot proudly sacrificed poetic and narrative order for “fewer steps to climb” (Cincinnati Art Museum News 1948, ii). In 1952, as part of continued interior renovations, the grand stair was removed and double height space of the Great Hall was floored over to provide even more display space.
The effect of these changes were amplified by the 1965 Adams-Emery Wing. By far the largest addition project of the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Adams-Emery Wing completely concealed the south facade of the McLaughlin building and the complementary Alms Wing. The new wing added fifty percent more gallery space and a list of new amenities. The ground floor had a new lecture hall, social halls, restaurant, and offices for the Cincinnati Historical Society. The first floor exhibition spaces were used for decorative arts and period rooms. The second floor had expanded galleries for the permanent collection and a larger space for temporary exhibitions.
This architectural intervention followed the strong functionalist philosophy that built the new parking lot and did irreprible damage to the museum complex. The aesthetic principles that directed the museum’s growth were convenience and growth. Describing the newly opened wing, Toledo Blade Art Editor Louise Bruner wrote, “The exterior is hardly an architect’s dream” (1965, G4). The sheer face of smooth white stone were pierced by tiny slit windows only at intermitten spots and the single plane of stone was varied by only the slightest hint of vertical joints. The amplified mullions on the ground floor windows signaled the location of the Historical Society offices, but seemed quite out of place. While the attempt here seems to be to create the effect of the early modernist universal floating white box, the result is rather haphazard. Bruner concludes, “the exterior blend of past and present is something to be proud of” (1965, G4). But how can one call the complete concealment a “blend”?
The interior was not any better. While the visitor once arrived in a large central space and then dispersed to radiating wings, the flooring over of this space broke the internal logic of the building. The grand stair, once the poetic ascent into the skylit upper galleries was demolished. By now, the Schmidlapp Wing was used as the main entrance. While exceedingly simple on the exterior, the interior was overwhelmingly complex. The building’s structure was a simplistic 12 foot by 12 foot steel frame grid, the architect’s managed to fit it out with the most confusing of interior spaces. Irregular shaped rooms were randomly inserted, dead end niches were created, and not a single datum or axis was adopted from the old galleries. To add to the misery of these spaces, the architect covered all the original large south-facing windows and replaced the naturally lit gallery spaces with totally enclosed electric lit boxes.
1967-2005 - Introspective Changes
The 1967 Adams-Emery Wing was the Cincinnati Art Museum’s last major building project. The 1992 internal remodeling by Glaser Associates of Cincinnati softened some of the poor effects. It removed the floor in the Great Hall and opened up the third floor studio space to create a new triple height space. The grand stair was put back, only in a new, north-facing version. Some of original walls were uncovered. Although the design did include some historicist details, such as the arched area at the top of the new grand stair, Glaser and Associates interior renovations greatly improved the visitor experience by creating a more synthetic internal arrangement.
This momentum was carried forward in 2003 by the Cincinnati Wing completed by KZF Designs of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Wing was the internal remodeling of the first floor of the Adams-Emery Wing. The decorative arts and period rooms were all removed and placed into storage and replaced by the growing collection of works by Cincinnati artists. In 2003, Procter and Gamble donated a substantial amount of paintings by Cincinnati artists from corporate art collection. This donation allowed the museum to rethink the internal layout again. KZF did its best to make the Adams-Emery Wing work as gallery space. They punched windows in the facade to allow daylight in for the first time, created a central axis from the main entrance, and arranged their gallery spaces on a very conservative sequence of similarly sized rooms. Along with the relocation of the cafe into a more central area and the new landscaping in the Garden Court, the Cincinnati Wing managed to create a more comfortable and pleasurable museum sequence.
2006 - Today’s Problem
Today, the museum is again faced with a major architectural problem. Timothy Rubb, the CAM Director between 2001 and 2006 claimed the major problem with the complex was that there was simply too much exhibition space and not enough room for all the other activities that a museum needs (personal interview). The three major challenges outlined in the Museum’s 2005 annual report titled Framing the Future were purely architectural.
“The Museum building was built incrementally, and there is no coherent architectural style, nor is there a coherent circulation pattern for visitors.
Many parts of the building are more than 100 years old, and they were built to serve different purposes than how Museums operate now.
Most of the more than 240,000 square feet of space in the building were built during the Museum’s first 80 years (1881-1962). There have been no significant additions to the structure in more than 40 years. Since the latest addition in 1962, our collection, staff, visitorship have grown significantly. In turn, demands on the facility have increased, and the current structure no longer serves the needs of our visitors.” (Annual Report 2005, 30)
The museum surely still served the needs of the visitor; it just did not serve the needs well. Circulation patterns, building functions, and new visitor needs require modernization. As museums worldwide went through a revolution of redesigns, additions, and expansions, the CAM remained relatively stable. All architectural efforts of the last twenty years have been to repair the damage of the previous forty years.
To complicate the problem in 2005, the Art Academy vacated its building and moved to an industrial loft space downtown. In 1973 the Art Academy and Museum administrations separated to allow the Academy to offer an accredited Bachelor of Arts degree in fine art. (Check this - is it a state or national requirement to have an independent administration?) The two institutions retained the same board of trustees. However, what CAM Director Barbara Gibbs described as “complexity of governance” led to the 1995 separation of the board of trustees. With an independent board and administration, the Art Academy no longer was attached to the museum. Teaching art no longer relies on viewing art in museums, and viewing art in museums no longer defines education as a strictly pedegogical experience. For better or for worse, the cultivation of individual vision and the provision of “infotainment” have redefined the once combined educational interests of the Academy and the Museum.
What is left is the building, the ruins of a not so distant past. The Art Academy is the only remaining visible structure from McLaughlin’s original designs. Although it went through extensive renovations in the 1950s, the exterior remained very much the way the architect had intended it. It is still very much the romantic, ivy-covered building McLaughlin drew 125 years ago.
Conclusion
The “art spirit” of Cincinnati was fed by private interests. While the Cincinnatians have always attended exhibitions that created the biggest spectacle, the CAM ignored the nature of the public by insisting of a cultivation of high art of a European decent. It seems rather simple to say, but money and the aesthetic taste of those with money were the determining factors in the foundation, development, and current position of the institution. As it developed, the building became less the all-encompassing arts institution envisioned by the WAMA and more the private monuments of elite Cincinnatians.
Today, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the “Art Palace of the West” is an architectural mess. It can no longer be described as a “palace” and it is nowhere near the West. McLaughlin’s original buildings may have been revolutionary in his own time by creating the “first purpose-built museum west of the Allegannies” (source?), but the only revolution possible today would be to increase the number of modifiers to the word museum. (perhaps first free-standing museum in the U.S. to be designed by a woman - CAC??) Unless the museum wishes to revel in its past, it will shed any nostalgic attachment to grandeur and make the most of the opportunities that exist today. The way forward is not in an attempt to recover an idealized past, but in the new combination of elements that make the museum a special place for the future.
In 2006 the CAM’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved a twenty-year Facilities Master Plan. Completed by the New York architectural firm Cooper Robertson and Partners, the new master plan adds much needed amenities to the museum complex. The design includes a new parking structure, larger temporary exhibition space, relocation of the shop and cafe, and an expanded education center. Although it prescribes no final architectural order, the most controversial issue in the new master plan is the proposed demolition of the Art Academy building. The Cincinnati Preservation Society was dismayed at this decision and currently lists the building as “endangered.” The Society asks for support to “help develop a workable plan for reuse of this Cincinnati architectural and cultural treasure” (CPS 2006, 8).
Perhaps something better can be done?
понедельник, 7 августа 2006 г.
Adaption equals Tradition
The British Museum Great Court is the focus of my precedent study. I chose this space initially because it was such an intriguing project. It was one of the first projects designed in a manner that was neither nor a detached sculpture on a pedestal. My first reactions were overwhelmingly positive.
After some research into the history of the BM, I find the entire museum a real oddity. I don't think there is another cultural institution quite like it. Its origins in the Wunderkammern of the elites, transfer to a large estate in west central London, rehousing in a Greek Revival temple, years of haphazard additions and buildings behind the front facade, and finally, remodeling in 2001 share no common vision. The museuem building are an unplanned collection of chance projects. Lack of funds and further lack of space has always dictated the direction of the built projects. The BM's first trustees could not afford a palatial estate or park setting for the collection being unable to afford to purchase Buckingham Palace's predecesor. The compromised by buying Montagu House on Great Russell Street.
The adaptation of this building in the late 1700s took four years. It continued the still present trend for cultural activities to be housed in buildings that were never intended to be used for such purposes. (MoMA Queens, The Mockbee in Cincinnati, The Louvre, The Hermitage). All of these adaptation projects benifited from the urban precence that was already installed in the building itself. The warehouse already had an identity in the urban fabric. This identity was simply added to by layering a new function inside it. A factory in Queens became both a factory and an art space. A chance to view famous work and a chance to think about place.
Sir Robert Smirke's 1823 plan for the museum masterplan simply adapted the Montagu House's Palladian layout and layered some Greek Revivalist column on the exterior. In this sense, although Smirke's grand building was the first intentionally design exhibition spaces, they are the direct decendent of the previous occupant of the site on Great Russell Street, a very large house.
Cabinet, to House, to Museum - the development of the spaces that we now consider to be so classical and solid in their typology, is really nothing more than a hasty tranfer of one well-understood place - the house, the interior, the cabinet, the self and its relation to interior as womb, center of identity, place to keep all you stuff - into the eleborate constructions that are museums.
After some research into the history of the BM, I find the entire museum a real oddity. I don't think there is another cultural institution quite like it. Its origins in the Wunderkammern of the elites, transfer to a large estate in west central London, rehousing in a Greek Revival temple, years of haphazard additions and buildings behind the front facade, and finally, remodeling in 2001 share no common vision. The museuem building are an unplanned collection of chance projects. Lack of funds and further lack of space has always dictated the direction of the built projects. The BM's first trustees could not afford a palatial estate or park setting for the collection being unable to afford to purchase Buckingham Palace's predecesor. The compromised by buying Montagu House on Great Russell Street.
The adaptation of this building in the late 1700s took four years. It continued the still present trend for cultural activities to be housed in buildings that were never intended to be used for such purposes. (MoMA Queens, The Mockbee in Cincinnati, The Louvre, The Hermitage). All of these adaptation projects benifited from the urban precence that was already installed in the building itself. The warehouse already had an identity in the urban fabric. This identity was simply added to by layering a new function inside it. A factory in Queens became both a factory and an art space. A chance to view famous work and a chance to think about place.
Sir Robert Smirke's 1823 plan for the museum masterplan simply adapted the Montagu House's Palladian layout and layered some Greek Revivalist column on the exterior. In this sense, although Smirke's grand building was the first intentionally design exhibition spaces, they are the direct decendent of the previous occupant of the site on Great Russell Street, a very large house.
Cabinet, to House, to Museum - the development of the spaces that we now consider to be so classical and solid in their typology, is really nothing more than a hasty tranfer of one well-understood place - the house, the interior, the cabinet, the self and its relation to interior as womb, center of identity, place to keep all you stuff - into the eleborate constructions that are museums.
пятница, 4 августа 2006 г.
The Eiffel Tower
After reading Roland Barthes “The Eiffel Tower.”
Barthes raised some interesting ideas in this essay explaining the nature of monuments, what constitutes a tourist experience, what is expected, and what an architectural object can do in relation to its surroundings.
The Eiffel Tower is an annomily in the Parisian city form. When it was built, it was hotly contested and harshly criticized. However “useless” critics may have once viewed this gigantic tower to be, it now functions on much more poetic terms with the city. It is an icon and symbol greater than its own physical presence. Today, the Eiffel Tower is Paris, it is France.
More interesting than symbols, the visitor experience at a monument is not simply directed by contact with a striking form. Barthes most interesting point is that monuments require an interior. Part of the tourist experience is to be enclosed, to venture into a new environment, and to then emerge. Visiting a monument, a cultural building, a city, or country, for that matter, involves crossing a boundary and entering a new system. Only by being inside architecture can one truly claim to have “been there and done that.”
The interior of monuments, the way the visitor experiences the sequence of events that control their journey, and the balance between the visitor limits and opportunities are the significant areas of architectural interventions. This is the place where space is determined and narrative is described.
Despite my aversion to interior design as a popularized decorative remodeling, I am interested in how the way an internal sequence of events shapes experience. (This experience extends beyond the walls of house, the walls of a city, or the boarders of a country. Architecture is essentially an exercise is drawing poetic boundaries.) What is more challenging, is how this sequence can be transmitted to the exterior of the building, to some enclosure that describes the events within. This is similar to giving a new form to a movie theater. Imagine the American movie theater - one of the most sophisticated and strictly controlled public environments and at the same time informative and highly political - encased is a wrapper that signals the importance of what goes on inside. Imagine seeing “Superman” in a space that is no longer a black box, but a synthetic mix of illusion and reality, urbanism and identity, space and experience. Now, most movie theaters are no spaces (the lights are off, nobody moves).
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Second Thoughts
Walter Benjamin dwells on the interior. In his essay on the development of the 19th Century and his attempts to reclassify history in the relationship of people to new understanding of history as the ever present, Benjamin dedicates an entire section to the interior. It is in the Parisian buduoirs of the nineteenth century that avante garde ideas of the modern world evolved. Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism were all born in this environment. Appollinaire, Breton, ... all wandered the streets. Derrida wrote in Paris in the 1970s. It was universally regarded as the center of the art world in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It is the convergence of the fresh ruins of an imperial power, the dirty cafes, and the overfilled civic institutions that gave birth to the aesthetic revolutions of the early twentieth century.
What Benjamin proposes is that the man of the crowds, the central character in his modern world, not only lives on the streets and in the arcades. The flaneur also has an interior life that is essential to his identity. Perhaps this development is a product of the modern world and industrialization’s seperation of work and home in the city, but the origins are beside the point. The way people function in the city is essentially a duel environment. Home is the nest, the interior. Everything beyond is outside, out, the city. The interior is the individual world that exists within the city, just like the artwork on the gallery wall is an individual world in the museum complex. Interior, boundaries, and the city. The boundary around the interior is the form of a building.
It would be interesting to compare Benjamin’s flanuer and Thoreau’s Wild Walker. Are there parallels or are these essentially different, opposed positions. “Hike up your skirts and go walking” - a note on a custom map at a cottage in southern England. Both are walking in forests. One is in a labyrinth (the city) one is outside civilization (the wild, the woods). Both let their paths be determined. The flaneur is slow paced, and indecissive (the pace of a turtle, passive) the wild walker is indeterminate, yet on a mission (free willed and committed).
---
1.8.06
London felt much smaller and quainter after driving back from Cornwall. It took on the air of a precious object.
среда, 19 июля 2006 г.
the architecture of compromise
Here's an interesting comparison - Sydney Smirke and Lord Norman Foster at the British Museum.
Both were at the top of their profession when comissioned to work on the British Museum's courtyard.
Both have had illustrious awards bestowed upon them. Smirke won the RIBA Gold Medal in 1860 and Foster in 1983.
Foster's 1994 apointment to design the British Museum courtyard was not much different than the government appointed services of Sydney Smirke in the 1850s. The argument that the "international competition" was not a predetermined selection among the six or seven usual suspects still maintains a naive view of architectural politics.
Sydney Smirke has been labeled by architectural historian J M Cook in Seven Victorian Architects as "a first-rate second-rate architect" (1976, 65). Norman Foster is, however, a highly-praised comtemporary architect know for futuristic designs. He is by no means considered "second rate" today. But, then again, we do not have the convinient lens of time in which to evaluate his entire work.
Smirke's intervention was a sturctural triumph. In three years he designed and built a domed space that was second only to the Pantheon in Rome in span. The Round Reading Room was one of the earliest applications of cast iron in a public building. (train stations and factories, I believe, were the earliest) Unfortunately, Smirke's classical architectural tendencies led him to clad all his innovation with Victorian detailing - like false books in front of columns, Lombardian windows that defy the iron frame's logic, and a list of classical cladding details unassociated with the true construction techniques.
Foster's intervention is a structural triump. In 33 months, the courtyard space was cleared of its clutter and an irregular CAD designed glass roof enveloped the space for the first time. Unfortunately, Foster's image-based design made many concessions to focus attention on the iconic roof - like a reproduction of a classical greak facade (poorly adapted and obviously a product of the 21st century), an old-fashioned freize with shout-outs to Queen Elizabeth, and an overall clinical design aesthetic that results in a space that is more virtual than poetic.
Both architect's compromised their art for image.
Other ideas like environmental treatment, relationship to the museum experience, the idea of commodity or learning to be at the center of the institution, and other things are worth pursuing. What is worth asking is, will Foster's intervention be a vital element of the future of the museum, or will his architectural efforts be replaced as the novelty wears off?
SOURCES:
J. Mordaunt Crook. “Sydney Smirke: the architecture of compromise.” (pg. 50-65) in Fawcett, Jane Ed. Seven Victorian Architects. Thames and Hudson; London, 1976.
Both were at the top of their profession when comissioned to work on the British Museum's courtyard.
Both have had illustrious awards bestowed upon them. Smirke won the RIBA Gold Medal in 1860 and Foster in 1983.
Foster's 1994 apointment to design the British Museum courtyard was not much different than the government appointed services of Sydney Smirke in the 1850s. The argument that the "international competition" was not a predetermined selection among the six or seven usual suspects still maintains a naive view of architectural politics.
Sydney Smirke has been labeled by architectural historian J M Cook in Seven Victorian Architects as "a first-rate second-rate architect" (1976, 65). Norman Foster is, however, a highly-praised comtemporary architect know for futuristic designs. He is by no means considered "second rate" today. But, then again, we do not have the convinient lens of time in which to evaluate his entire work.
Smirke's intervention was a sturctural triumph. In three years he designed and built a domed space that was second only to the Pantheon in Rome in span. The Round Reading Room was one of the earliest applications of cast iron in a public building. (train stations and factories, I believe, were the earliest) Unfortunately, Smirke's classical architectural tendencies led him to clad all his innovation with Victorian detailing - like false books in front of columns, Lombardian windows that defy the iron frame's logic, and a list of classical cladding details unassociated with the true construction techniques.
Foster's intervention is a structural triump. In 33 months, the courtyard space was cleared of its clutter and an irregular CAD designed glass roof enveloped the space for the first time. Unfortunately, Foster's image-based design made many concessions to focus attention on the iconic roof - like a reproduction of a classical greak facade (poorly adapted and obviously a product of the 21st century), an old-fashioned freize with shout-outs to Queen Elizabeth, and an overall clinical design aesthetic that results in a space that is more virtual than poetic.
Both architect's compromised their art for image.
Other ideas like environmental treatment, relationship to the museum experience, the idea of commodity or learning to be at the center of the institution, and other things are worth pursuing. What is worth asking is, will Foster's intervention be a vital element of the future of the museum, or will his architectural efforts be replaced as the novelty wears off?
SOURCES:
J. Mordaunt Crook. “Sydney Smirke: the architecture of compromise.” (pg. 50-65) in Fawcett, Jane Ed. Seven Victorian Architects. Thames and Hudson; London, 1976.
среда, 5 июля 2006 г.
Tafuri's Chance
Tafuri's writing is extremely thick. I find it difficult to read more than a short passage at a time in order to absorb and understand exactly what he is talking about. A section that I came across today, though, struck me as rather clear and interesting.
"The Crisis of Utopia: Le Corbusier at Algiers""To absorb that multiplicity, to temper the improbable with the certainty of the plan, to reconcile organic structure and disorganized by exacerbating the dialectical relationship between them, to demonstrate that the highest level of productive planning coincides with the maximum "productivity of spirit": such were the objectives that Le Corbusier delineated, with a lucidity unparalleled within progressive European architectural culture at the time, ever aware of the triple front on which modern architecture had to fight. If architecture was now anonymous with organization of production, it was also true that distribution and use were also determinate factors of the cycle, in addition to production itself. The architect as organizer, not a designer of objects. This statement of Le Corbusier's was not a slogan, but an imperative linking intellectual initiative and la civilisation machiniste" (Hays 1998, 25).
"To encompass Le Corbusier and Breton," as Benjamin once wrote, would be to string a bow that could shoot an arrow into the heart of contemporary France. My paraphrase of this quote is laziness, but I think the essence remains. Le Corbusier was the most illusive of the "modernists" because his work defies strict classification and his theory is not embedded in reason alone. The artist values that Corb maintained in his work allow it to still communicate and intrigue, while other attempts at utopia have failed. I would say that Corbusier never sought Utopia, but more of a synthetic blend of forms. These may not have been past and future, but they definitely allowed variance and change. If Corb's practical dreams could be blended with Bretons serious fantasies, then a synthesis could be achieved between two quite opposite, but contemporary intellectual giants. Tafuri, who heroically deconstructs modernist efforts, describes Corbusier's methodology as the "most advanced and formally elevated hypothesis of bourgeois culture in the field of design and urban planning to its day" (Hayes 1998, 28).
Source: Hays, Michael. Ed. Architectural Theory Since 1968. MIT: Cambridge, 1998.
"The Crisis of Utopia: Le Corbusier at Algiers""To absorb that multiplicity, to temper the improbable with the certainty of the plan, to reconcile organic structure and disorganized by exacerbating the dialectical relationship between them, to demonstrate that the highest level of productive planning coincides with the maximum "productivity of spirit": such were the objectives that Le Corbusier delineated, with a lucidity unparalleled within progressive European architectural culture at the time, ever aware of the triple front on which modern architecture had to fight. If architecture was now anonymous with organization of production, it was also true that distribution and use were also determinate factors of the cycle, in addition to production itself. The architect as organizer, not a designer of objects. This statement of Le Corbusier's was not a slogan, but an imperative linking intellectual initiative and la civilisation machiniste" (Hays 1998, 25).
"To encompass Le Corbusier and Breton," as Benjamin once wrote, would be to string a bow that could shoot an arrow into the heart of contemporary France. My paraphrase of this quote is laziness, but I think the essence remains. Le Corbusier was the most illusive of the "modernists" because his work defies strict classification and his theory is not embedded in reason alone. The artist values that Corb maintained in his work allow it to still communicate and intrigue, while other attempts at utopia have failed. I would say that Corbusier never sought Utopia, but more of a synthetic blend of forms. These may not have been past and future, but they definitely allowed variance and change. If Corb's practical dreams could be blended with Bretons serious fantasies, then a synthesis could be achieved between two quite opposite, but contemporary intellectual giants. Tafuri, who heroically deconstructs modernist efforts, describes Corbusier's methodology as the "most advanced and formally elevated hypothesis of bourgeois culture in the field of design and urban planning to its day" (Hayes 1998, 28).
Source: Hays, Michael. Ed. Architectural Theory Since 1968. MIT: Cambridge, 1998.
понедельник, 3 июля 2006 г.
пятница, 30 июня 2006 г.
Space Planning for the Over-artistic
Some general rules of exhibition design:
Maximum density: 1 sm/ visitor
Preferred density: 1.5 sm/ visitor
Clearences: 1500mm (5ft)
Distance from objects on open display: 1m
Curators will always want to include more objects
Objects must always be placed in neat groups
Flat works hanging height: 1500mm (59in) o.c. (alter for larger works)
Label Font Size: 18pt min.
Benches are never planned
All this, although the briefest of requirements, can reign in even the greatest of artistic gestures and exhibition flamboyance. It is the reality of design, though.
Maximum density: 1 sm/ visitor
Preferred density: 1.5 sm/ visitor
Clearences: 1500mm (5ft)
Distance from objects on open display: 1m
Curators will always want to include more objects
Objects must always be placed in neat groups
Flat works hanging height: 1500mm (59in) o.c. (alter for larger works)
Label Font Size: 18pt min.
Benches are never planned
All this, although the briefest of requirements, can reign in even the greatest of artistic gestures and exhibition flamboyance. It is the reality of design, though.
среда, 28 июня 2006 г.
"The World in a Box"
A fantastic program was on the BBC the other night.
The World in a Box
The main idea in this program was that the origin of modern museums is curiousity that blends art and science, reason and wonder. The Wunderkammern of the 16th Century, which juxtaposed so many fragments both strange and beautiful, is finding new interpretaion in 21st century display techniques. It seems like the appeal of collecting has never lost its power, and the influence of placing items in a close juxtaposition still creates unique associations that chronology or minimal exhibition techniques - so typical of modernism and most museums through the 20th Century - loses all sense of comprehensive wonder. The narrative of "history" as the strict categorization of "Impressionist" or "Egyptian" objects totally negates the power of an object within a greater context.
Although the examples in the program are not the best, I think that the author is on to something. I would suggest the reorganization of the Tate Modern and the reinstallation of the Enlightenment Galleries in the British Museum as two more interesting examples.
The World in a Box
The main idea in this program was that the origin of modern museums is curiousity that blends art and science, reason and wonder. The Wunderkammern of the 16th Century, which juxtaposed so many fragments both strange and beautiful, is finding new interpretaion in 21st century display techniques. It seems like the appeal of collecting has never lost its power, and the influence of placing items in a close juxtaposition still creates unique associations that chronology or minimal exhibition techniques - so typical of modernism and most museums through the 20th Century - loses all sense of comprehensive wonder. The narrative of "history" as the strict categorization of "Impressionist" or "Egyptian" objects totally negates the power of an object within a greater context.
Although the examples in the program are not the best, I think that the author is on to something. I would suggest the reorganization of the Tate Modern and the reinstallation of the Enlightenment Galleries in the British Museum as two more interesting examples.
понедельник, 26 июня 2006 г.
Round Reading Room
The British Museum is one of the greatest museums in the world. It is the ultimate Enlightenment estblishment, the physical representation of the idea that knowledge should be made available to all to view, interpret, and understand.
In an argument for the preservation of the museum, Hugh Thomas gives a brief summary of its development:
"The British Museum was established in 1753 as a universal Temple of the Arts. Its modern history has, however, been a process of fragmentation. In 1825, the paintings which it owned went to Trafalgar Square, to become the Nationla Gallery. In 1883, the collection of natural history went to South Kensington. In 1905, the nespapers and periodicals went to Colindale; and in 1970, the holdings on ethnography went to Burlington Gardens” (Thomas 1983, 11).
In the mid-90s the library also moved out of the museum. What was once the collection of research materials of the museum, were moved a mile north to a new building on Euston road. This new building was titled "The British Library."
The symbolic value of Enlightenment-based pursuit of knowledge was best represented by the Round Reading Room, the domed, circular structure in the center of the museum's open courtyard. Thomas, on behalf of his “International Committee of the Campaign to Save the Round Reading Room” was campaigning for the "creative" conservation of this majestic space.
The problems with this space is extremely complex, but some features I have recently discovered are extremely interesting. One, the Round Reading Room was a revolutionary peice of environmental engineering rendered useless by modern intervention. A "spider" underneath the library floor circulated cool air through submerged passages up into the library via custom cast iron duct work in the desks. The air was circulated solely by the stack effect of the tall dome. This system worked for 150 years. Foster's intervation in 1995, the Great Court project, sealed the outdoor space, shut all the windows, and replaced the passive air circulation system with a modern HVAC system. Praised as one of the world's leading practitioners of environmental architecture, Foster negated the entire Round Reading Room design.
Second, the Great Court is not part of the British Museum. Technically and leagally, it is a public space that happens to be in the center of the museum. Since all public spaces must be open for use during the day, the British Museum was leagally bound to leave its doors open from morning till night to let people walk through the very center of its collection. This has changed recently, but considerable regulations and restrictions still apply to the Great Court space. For example, you cannot move the tables and chairs without a formal act of the Camden Council.
I will have to elaborate on these points later, as I develop my precedent study, but for now, I think this post is enough.
SOURCE:Thomas, Hugh. The Case for the Round Reading Room. Centre for Policy Studies: London, 1983.
среда, 21 июня 2006 г.
The Beginning of the of the Beginning
Eisenmann writes:
"An origin of value implies a state or a condition of origin before value has been given to it. A beginning is such a condition prior to a valued origin. In order to reconstruct the timeless, the state as is, of face value, one must begin: begin by elimination the time-bound concepts of the classical, which are primarily origin and end. The end of the beginning is also the end of the beginning of value.
...
This formula, part of the fictions of reason and history, reduces architecture to an "added to" or "inessential" object by making it simply an effect of certain causes understood as origins. This problem is inherent in all of classical architecture, including its modernist aspect. The idea of architecture as something "added to" rather than something with its own being-as adjectival rather than nominal or ontological-leads to the perception of architecture as a practical device. As long as architecture is primarily a device designated for use and for shelter-that is, as long as it has origins in programmatic functions-it will always constitute and effect" (Eisenmann 1996, 220).
I apologize for the lengthy quotation, but I can't help thinking there is something terribly wrong about this passage. This is what I think is the core argument of Eisenmann's essay "The End of the Classical," the strongest argument I've read against historical, rational, and representational value in architecture. I don't think he truly disproves the value of history and I certainly am not convinced about his evidence for a purely "arbitrary" design approach.
But this is enough for now. Defining and expanding on what is wrong with this statement is the starting point for my architectural thesis. This "End" will become a new beginning.
"An origin of value implies a state or a condition of origin before value has been given to it. A beginning is such a condition prior to a valued origin. In order to reconstruct the timeless, the state as is, of face value, one must begin: begin by elimination the time-bound concepts of the classical, which are primarily origin and end. The end of the beginning is also the end of the beginning of value.
...
This formula, part of the fictions of reason and history, reduces architecture to an "added to" or "inessential" object by making it simply an effect of certain causes understood as origins. This problem is inherent in all of classical architecture, including its modernist aspect. The idea of architecture as something "added to" rather than something with its own being-as adjectival rather than nominal or ontological-leads to the perception of architecture as a practical device. As long as architecture is primarily a device designated for use and for shelter-that is, as long as it has origins in programmatic functions-it will always constitute and effect" (Eisenmann 1996, 220).
I apologize for the lengthy quotation, but I can't help thinking there is something terribly wrong about this passage. This is what I think is the core argument of Eisenmann's essay "The End of the Classical," the strongest argument I've read against historical, rational, and representational value in architecture. I don't think he truly disproves the value of history and I certainly am not convinced about his evidence for a purely "arbitrary" design approach.
But this is enough for now. Defining and expanding on what is wrong with this statement is the starting point for my architectural thesis. This "End" will become a new beginning.
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