Pianissimo

A month after the opening, The New Yorker's architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, finally says his piece, in the May 29 issue, on Renzo Piano's addition to the Morgan Library and Museum. Shouldn't a weekly magazine be right on the news? And shouldn't he have included Columbia University's 18-acre, mega-expansion in Harlem on his list of the New York City projects that Piano is currently designing?

By contrast, the NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff weighed in more than two weeks early---the first of five Times scribes to lavish attention and praise on the newspaper's house architect, who also designed the Times' new headquarters, now under construction (and prematurely panned by Goldberger).

What's strange, in both cases, is that neither critic saw fit to comment on what, to my mind, is an architectural flop: Piano's expansion of the High Museum of Art, which opened last November---his most recently completed project in America before the Morgan.

His addition to the High's original Richard Meier building, which made that architect's reputation, was a new direction for Piano, who was best known and justly admired for his stand-alone, intimately scaled, one-collector museums (the Menil, Nasher, Beyeler and Klee galleries).

Perhaps it was Piano's concern for not upstaging or clashing with Meier that made his own structure understated to a fault: The flat expanses of painted metal panels (a similar vocabulary to that of the Morgan addition's exterior) look dull beside the lustrous, curved enamel skin of Meier's masterpiece.

The chief visual interest in Piano's High is the building'’s crown, which houses its skylights. He calls it a "“flotilla of sails."” It looks marvelous in photos taken from above. But from ground level, the "sails"” look more like the top of a picket fence. Even Piano's usual strongpoint, the sensitive use of natural light, is less successful in Atlanta: Perhaps overreacting to criticism of the harsh glare from Meier'’s skylights, Piano engineered elaborately constructed skylights that don'’t adequately illuminate paintings.

For my appraisal of the new Morgan, you'll have to wait for the June issue of Art in America magazine ("Front Page" section).

May 22, 2006 6:39 PM | | Comments (0)

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Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

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This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on May 22, 2006 6:39 PM.

Is 2006 the New 1990? was the previous entry in this blog.

Vengerov: Full of Bull is the next entry in this blog.

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