Rating the New Museums: The Best (and Worst) of 2007---Part I
By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger
Last year marked both the 10th anniversary of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
and the 30th of Renzo Piano's and
Richard Rogers' Centre Georges Pompidou--the two most influential cultural buildings
of our time. As the worldwide construction boom spurred by those watershed
projects continued unabated, 2007 witnessed the inauguration of still more
museum buildings and additions. Here are my highly opinionated personal picks for the
best new museum architecture of the year just past, to be followed tomorrow by
my list of the worst.
New Museum for
Contemporary Art, New York, by SANAA. My choice for 2007's Museum of the
Year. Okay, it's not perfect, but despite the industrial-strength fluorescent
lighting, narrow stairways, and a few other lapses, no new museum in recent
memory has exhilarated me anywhere as much. Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa's
astonishing triumph over a tight budget and even more restricted site is an
urbanistic tour-de-force. This Miracle on the Bowery, as I've called it,
delivers spaces ideal for contemporary art of all kinds, as well as
a stunning refutation of the grow-or-die philosophy epitomized by MoMA's
soul-killing metamorphosis from artworld clubhouse to global corporate
headquarters. The brilliant New Museum cost $50 million; the bloated new MoMA,
more than $500 million. Museum boards take note: You sometimes get what you don't pay for.
Museo del Prado
addition, Madrid, by Jose Rafael Moneo Arquitecto. An almost audible sigh
of relief wafted through the artworld when Rafael Moneo's Prado wing debuted
late last year. Although Moneo designed the imposing National Museum of Roman
Art of 1980-86 in Mérida, Spain, for the Prado he rejected any hint of
grandiosity and crafted an appropriately dignified amplificacion that neither plays dead nor pleads for attention.
This stolid brick treasure chest pays subtle homage to the foursquare masonry
of traditional Spanish architecture, and graciously focuses attention on the 19th-century art inside With consummate self-assurance, this modern
master elevates himself high above the fray of today's sensation-seeking museum
mongers.
Museum of
Contemporary Art, Denver, by Adjaye Associates. The London-based David
Adjaye, 42, has swiftly become a fixture on the hippest architectural
shortlists, including the New York commission won by SANAA (above.) His
invigorating design for the New Museum's Denver counterpart confirms him as an
international leader among the profession's mid-career generation. After Daniel
Libeskind's sculpturally overwrought, functionally troubled, titanium sheathed
Denver Art Museum addition of 2000-06, Adjaye's elegant minimalist box (go here and click: "New Building"),
sheathed in smoky tinted glass, seems the antithesis of such dated post-Bilbao
"destination" architecture. Although this flexible series of display spaces has
struck some as insufficiently defined, I'll take Adjaye's adaptable
amorphousness over Libeskind's Cinderella-slipper formalism any time.
Greek and Roman Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, by Jeffrey L. Daly after a plan by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates. Although not a freestanding addition or autonomous wing, the Met's spectacular new Greek and Roman Galleries merit a high place among 2007's museum successes. The idea for converting the Met's erstwhile cafeteria (dubbed the "Dorotheum" after its chi-chi 1940s makeover by decorator Dorothy Draper) into gallery space grew from the master plan of architect Kevin Roche, but design credit belongs to the museum's Jeffrey L. Daly, with considerable help from Greek and Roman curator Carlos Picón and colleagues. Machado and Silvetti's unironic recasting of the Roman replica Getty Villa in Malibu, completed in 2006, took the high-style curse off historical revivalism and indirectly legitimized the unapologetic traditionalism of the Met's latest museum-within-a-museum--the final triumph of Philippe de Montebello's long, glorious, and lamentably concluding directorship.
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
