Libeskind's Fire and Rain: You Mean It Snows a Lot in Denver?

DAM's Staff Before the Cuts: Preview Party of the New Hamilton Building, Sept. 10, 2006. Photo by Brendan Harrington and the DAM photographic services department.
This has been a bad news week for Daniel Libeskind: First this report of suspected arson at his first completed building, the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Germany. (Karsten Luecke, a CultureGrrl reader in Germany, today alerted me to this article, in German, from Schwäbische Zeitung Online, which quotes the comment by the museum's director, Inge Jaehner, that "nothing happened to the pictures or the interior.")
Now this report from Architectural Record that the roof of Libeskind's recently opened addition to the Denver Art Museum couldn't keep out the Colorado snow.
Kelly Davidson writes:
Construction crews are preparing to start permanent repairs on the roof of the new Frederic C. Hamilton wing at the Denver Art Museum. The roof began leaking as a result of record-breaking snowfalls this winter....
Crews will likely replace much of the atrium's existing roof....Though plans for a permanent solution are still in discussion, the museum hopes to have the problem resolved by the end of summer. The price tag for repairs is undisclosed at this time.
This roof razing comes on top of other signs of financial strain at the Denver museum. According to the museum's most recent annual report, for the year ending Sept. 30, DAM had already sustained a "planned deficit of $2.9 million in the operating fund, which was a result of expenses incurred to outfit and staff the Hamilton Building. The museum anticipates that the majority of the planned deficit will be recouped with revenues from the expanded complex."
Or maybe not. On Monday, the museum issued this press release:
The Denver Art Museum has implemented changes to bring staff levels into alignment with the ongoing program and operation of the Museum. Thirty staff members...took advantage of a voluntary resignation program offered by the Museum nearly two weeks ago. In addition to the voluntary resignations, the Museum has eliminated an additional eight positions effective this week. These reductions total approximately 14%; however, staffing remains 15% higher than pre-expansion levels.
This "budget tightening and staff reassessment" was prompted in part by attendance shortfalls due to "harsh holiday weather," as well as "soft revenues in some areas," according to the press release. But the need to come up with funds for roof replacement (unless the cost is borne by Libeskind) could be another significant budget buster.
These growing pains bring to mind the post-expansion financial difficulties related to another "wow" addition, Santiago Calatrava's Quadracci Pavilion for the Milwaukee Art Museum, which opened in 2001. And Denver's faulty roof brings to mind the customary complaint about Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings: Sometimes the edges of the "cutting edge" aren't watertight, and the "built experiments" don't quite work.
Categories:
About
KEEP CULTUREGRRL BLOGGING! Please Contribute (Secure transaction via PayPal): (You do not need to have your own PayPal account: Click the "continue" link at lower left of the donation page.)
ADVERTISE on CultureGrrl MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, AUCTION HOUSES, ART PUBLICATIONS, ARTS PROGRAMS---Please go here and click the "CultureGrrl" box to place an ad. For more information on advertising, e-mail here. more
LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I've been a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and the annual conference of the Museum Association of New York, and on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University. more
Contact me
Click here to send me an email...
moreBlogroll
About Last Night
Art History Newsletter
Art Law Blog
Art Observed
The Art Tribune (France)
Artblog.net
Articulations (Smithsonian)
Artopia
Design Observer
A Don's Life
Edward Lifson
Exhibitionist (Boston)
Eye Level (SAAM)
Foot in Mouth (dance)
Greg.org
LA Observed (Los Angeles)
Looking Around (Time)
Looting Matters
Modern Kicks
New Curator
NewYorkology--Architecture
NewYorkology--Museums
NYC Opera Fanatic
Opera Chic
Slog (Seattle)
Tropolism
Walker
AJ Ads
AJ Arts Blog Ads
Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.
Advertise Here
AJ Blogs
AJBlogCentral | rssculture
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Richard Kessler on arts education
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Art from the American Outback
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
No genre is the new genre
David Jays on theatre and dance
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
John Rockwell on the arts
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
classical music
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
visual
Public Art, Public Space
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog

Leave a comment