Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-barnes-foundation-and-corporate-space/35338/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-08-03T15:08:12-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
The more vexing issues with the Barnes Museum are two-fold. First, the display of this collection is codified in a manner to represent its historical context. An arrangement which likely passes over the comprehension of most visitors. The art in many ways is simply too much for visual consumption, much less mental engagement. It seems that Dr. Barnes had a fancy to collect any and everything. I suspect he would have collected nail clippings if they were verifiable as detritus from some great mid-century artist. Which leads to the question - how to address a 19th century collection in 21st century context? The trustees would have much better served the public by simply displaying the art in a more logical and ordered manner, a time line if you will. Since Dr. Barnes saw himself as a defacto educator, he likely felt the more, the better. The problem for us of course is sorting through the junk box. For many of us, it is easy to uncover the lives, histories and productivities of great artists via the Internet or other sources. Most of these artists are housed in collections in world-class museums usually displaying their best work, never all of their work.

So the replication of the Paul Cret Edifice seems to leave us asking, why? As opposed to, wow!

Secondly, the architects had a much more confounding challenge. Williams and Tsien, disciples if you will of the great Lou Kahn, are materialists in the truest sense. They are touchy, feely building designers and if attuned to their fussiness, fret over every detail, connection, corner, shape, form and material, with an over-arching compulsiveness. This, in effect, is to their credit. And, like any true modernist architect who carries on the legacy of the heroic and poetic, counterbalancing the requirement to make a faux historical museum with an overly modern, grand space is a daunting design challenge.

Kahn, their master, would have avoided the necessity to fabricate a theater set for the paintings, a challenge he so aptly ignored with Paul Mellon's collection at Yale. Kahn created a great grid-like modernist building with a grand atrium. Instead of making the art in the atrium the essential feature, he made the staircase the essential feature. He allowed the art to be hung in a 19th century manner, all over the lushly paneled walls of the atrium and relegated the rest of the collection to a series of intertwining galleries surrounding his grand central light filled space.

Kahn was a master, Williams and Tsien are very talented. Kahn was rarely under the pressure of committees, bureaucrats, benefactors and the like. He simply made architecture in its own right for its own sake and subordinated most programs to his own whim and fancy. Often, he described the single most salient feature in his designs as light, thematically and form-making. An architect who got away with being a poet.

You can see Kahn in the Barnes over-sized atrium. You can see him in the details. You can't see him in the galleries. Thus, when Kahn designed a museum, he never compromised his building for the art. Unfortunately, the architects for the Barnes Foundation seemingly did not have that choice nor opportunity.
]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-barnes-foundation-and-corporate-space/35338/#comments 2012-08-03T15:08:12-05:00 Although that judgment does not seem universal.
This article is talking about something completely different. What is this space for? Archery or jousting?
The imagery presents an architectural resolution of extreme competence, but to what end? ]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-barnes-foundation-and-corporate-space/35338/#comments 2012-07-29T00:07:31-05:00 http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-barnes-foundation-and-corporate-space/35338/#comments 2012-07-27T22:02:17-05:00 http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-barnes-foundation-and-corporate-space/35338/#comments 2012-07-27T20:21:31-05:00 I understand that you are trying to make a point, but I more appreciate the Ada Louise Huxtable (and not just because it's her) review, which acknowledges the political histories and then separates them from the architecture.
An 'event space' used for corporate functions? Say it isn't so! I guess you could say that about the House of Representatives too, but that doesn't take away from its architecture.
]]> http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-barnes-foundation-and-corporate-space/35338/#comments 2012-07-27T14:30:13-05:00