http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11618
Why museums need a balance of the sacred and the profane
By Jason Edward Kaufman
Renzo Piano has become the single most sought after museum builder in the world. Since working with Richard Rogers on the Pompidou Center in Paris in the 1970s, the Italian architect has designed nearly a dozen museums marked by their elegance, refined detail, and innovative engineering. They are also remarkably respectful of the art they contain. His first major project in the US was the Menil Collection in Houston from 1982-6, and a decade later he built the nearby Cy Twombly Gallery. Since his completion of the Beyeler Foundation Museum outside Basel in 1997, his particular skills have remained highly in demand in the US, despite his avoidance of competitions, and the continued boom in museum building has led to a string of commissions. Last October, his Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas opened to critical acclaim, and he is currently working on expansions of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Morgan Library in New York, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Harvard University Art Museums, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and most recently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is also at work on the Paul Klee Museum in Bern, Switzerland, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo.
In his main offices in Paris and Genoa, Mr Piano employs about 100 people, including 12 partners with whom he has worked for between 20 and 30 years. He describes his team as "like being married to 12 ladies. You know each one very well and don't even have to talk. You just make a little nod and everybody understands each other very quickly."
The Art Newspaper spoke with Renzo Piano about his unique understanding of the function of museum architecture, its need to create a special atmosphere conducive to aesthetic contemplation, and the way poetry and emotion guide the architect's hand.
The Art Newspaper: Have you thought of opening a US office?
Renzo Piano: We could open an office, but travelling is not that difficult, and there is the danger that you lose control and the intensity of control. If the scheme is in the office here (in Paris), I get in touch with it daily. Once you start to move out, you start the dangerous course of delegating which is something I'm not very good at. I'm more the kind of person who puts their fingers everywhere.
TAN:How would you describe the ideal client for a museum?
RP:The ideal client for a museum first is not timid and tells you the truth.
Dominique de Menil was a classically good client. She was very tough and stubborn, but was also very light in the sense that she would listen, but at the same time she knew what she wanted. A good client is not necessarily an easy client. A client with a strong character is normally much better. You do your job and he does his job. The advantage of a certain success is that you stop having bad clients because you select them. We take a very little portion of what we're offered. But in this process the chemistry is essential.
TAN: In addition to the New York Times headquarters and the masterplan for a Harlem campus of Columbia University in NY, you have many US commissions for museums. Perhaps it is simply that more museum building is taking place in the US.
RP: Yes, this is quite evident. It is not just fashion. A generation of people have been collecting art with the help of a legal-fiscal situation [i.e., tax benefits for charitable gifts] that is not the same in Europe. Like Ray [Nasher]. He thought about putting this collection that he loves like his life into other museums. He wanted a beautiful house for his collection that was joyful and full of light, but he didn't find it. So in some way it became natural for him to make that generous gesture of buying a piece of land in the middle of Dallas and building the museum there.
TAN: Many architects today are commissioned to make iconic buildings as symbols of a city or an institution. Some critics believe these buildings can fail to serve the art. What is your position in the art vs architecture debate?
RP: I believe architecture is art, of course. It's art, but it's not sculpture because it's made for making service to something else.
Architecture is art that you do to shelter something else-a house, a family, a museum, a concert hall. There is always that service. Now, there are different ways to do this. One way is just functional, but I don't think this is enough because architecture is not just the art of making buildings; it is also the art of telling stories, like other art. It is an art of expression. So one way to make architecture is giving strength to the functional aspect. Another one is, without forgetting the functional aspect, to give strength to poetry, to emotion and poetry. This is where the difference is very subtle.
Take the Menil Foundation for example. It is not a space that you can say is neutral. The famous theory about making neutral space for museums because then the architecture does not compete with the art is a stupid idea. If you make a neutral space you kill art. You cannot give up as an architect. You still have to give to your work and your space a character. In some way that is why the research we have done on the Menil is about atmosphere.
The Kimbell in Fort Worth was probably the first time when I was in a museum where I felt this idea of emotion. The natural light in there was not really to illuminate the painting, but it is very emotional. The Kimbell is a very emotional building. In some way the Menil Collection is taking from the Kimbell-not in the form of the building, but the spirit, in the idea of the atmosphere. In some ways, the little Ray Nasher Museum is also taking from there. It is about the idea that if you do not want to compete with art, and you still want to give a character to the museum, you have to work on the immateriality of the museum-light, vibration, proportion.
TAN: What about the idea of "the white cube" as the best gallery format to show art?
RP: I do not think it's good. The closest thing to the white cube that is still good is the industrial space, the loft. But a loft is not a white cube. The loft is already quite interesting because it is in some ways more generous, more open.
We are working on the Paul Klee Museum in Bern, Switzerland. This is where all the Klee collection from the Bern Museum will be in about one year's time. The existing museum in the centre of the city is what you might call "the white box." The theory is that because it is a white box, Paul Klee is safe. But when you go there, you realise that that white box is even able to kill Klee, because it is too neutral, it is dead. It is not giving light. It is killing art. I'm not saying that to make art happy you have to make anything extravagant. Actually I am saying the opposite. But the white cube theory I do not believe.
TAN: Do you consider the collections that will go into the museum?
RP: Of course, this is where we start. The first thing I did when I started to work on the Menil was to go with Dominique to the famous barn [where her work was housed at Rice University] and to look at each piece. When we worked on the little Cy Twombly pavilion next door, Cy came to my office when he was in Italy and we started to talk, then we visited him and we started to work together. And when we started to work in Basel with Beyeler, immediately we made 1:10 scale models of all 125 pieces of the collection.
Even with Ray, I've been touching each piece of his collection 10 times, because it is essential to understand.
TAN: What are the challenges and issues involved in making museums today?
RP: You were asking about the risk of museums today. One is to make museums with too much design, too much of a gesture so they do not do their job correctly, they do not make their service well. But the other risk for me is success. When I was a young guy with Richard Rogers we designed the Pompidou in Paris and that was the moment at the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies when museums were very dusty and boring places. I'm more than happy about the idea that museums finally became now very successful places. But they can have too much success and often you are unable to enjoy art because it polluted by crowds and noise. Museums may become so big that they lose their real function-the silent enjoyment and contemplation of art. Museums today have a double life-they have a sacred life and a profane life. If you do not do something to save both of those dimensions you are in trouble. This is what we are trying to do in the Chicago Art Institute, in the Harvard Art Museums, and in the new High in Atlanta. I think we have to accept that the museums will only survive if they will be able to do their job, but at the same time we have to accept that art contemplation is a sacred function. It is something that needs calm and silence.
TAN: Can you actually build that kind of experience into your architecture?
RP: I think so. I don't know, but this is what we are trying to do. Of course I am not suggesting to make a building divided into two, with two different souls. But I think it is not impossible to make a structure where in some way you enter, and when you move up onto the second or third floor and into the art space, metaphorically you take your shoes off and you change speed.
TAN: Your buildings tend to be made with planes, with straight lines. What do you think of "expressionist" architecture or abstract "sculptural" architecture, like that of Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry?
RP: I love Frank. He's a good friend, especially a good friend of my little son. I keep telling him it is because they have they have the same mental age: my son is four years old and Frank happily enough is like a little boy. He's a great architect, he's a great sculptor. It's not true that he makes buildings that don't work. The buildings that Frank does functionally work well. Calatrava is also a great guy. He does a bit too much sometimes, but again, I think in the museum you have to accept that art is the focus.
TAN: You prefer to compose in planes and straight lines?
RP: Yes, but not always. For example, in Rome last year we just finished a concert hall made up of three different halls and everything there is round, everything there is a curve. If you take Kansai Airport in Japan, it is like an immense two-kilometre-long glider. It's a curve. But when you have to hang up a painting, you have to hang it up on planes not curves. You may ask what I think of the Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim in New York, which is a great building, better for sculpture than for painting. It's so good that in the end, you excuse it.
TAN: Which artists influenced your architecture?
RP: All of them. You know I have a little collection, though I never bought a piece of art myself. I was very friendly with Matta. With Bob Rauschenberg we have been working together on a job in Italy for a church. We were trying to work with Roy Lichtenstein, but it never worked out unfortunately because he died. Mark diSuvero is a great friend, and Jean Tingeuly and I were good friends, enjoying life, drinking in the evening and smoking little cigars. I've been a very close friend to people like Luciano Berio, John Cage, Pierre Boulez. This is what is great about art: there are no frontiers. You are friends among writers, and you steal from writers, the next day you steal from musicians, the next day you steal from a sculptor or a painter. It is always like that. It's a continuous robbery one from the other. But it's a robbery without a mask.
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
Why museums need a balance of the sacred and the profane
By Jason Edward Kaufman
Renzo Piano has become the single most sought after museum builder in the world. Since working with Richard Rogers on the Pompidou Center in Paris in the 1970s, the Italian architect has designed nearly a dozen museums marked by their elegance, refined detail, and innovative engineering. They are also remarkably respectful of the art they contain. His first major project in the US was the Menil Collection in Houston from 1982-6, and a decade later he built the nearby Cy Twombly Gallery. Since his completion of the Beyeler Foundation Museum outside Basel in 1997, his particular skills have remained highly in demand in the US, despite his avoidance of competitions, and the continued boom in museum building has led to a string of commissions. Last October, his Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas opened to critical acclaim, and he is currently working on expansions of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Morgan Library in New York, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Harvard University Art Museums, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and most recently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is also at work on the Paul Klee Museum in Bern, Switzerland, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo.
In his main offices in Paris and Genoa, Mr Piano employs about 100 people, including 12 partners with whom he has worked for between 20 and 30 years. He describes his team as "like being married to 12 ladies. You know each one very well and don't even have to talk. You just make a little nod and everybody understands each other very quickly."
The Art Newspaper spoke with Renzo Piano about his unique understanding of the function of museum architecture, its need to create a special atmosphere conducive to aesthetic contemplation, and the way poetry and emotion guide the architect's hand.
The Art Newspaper: Have you thought of opening a US office?
Renzo Piano: We could open an office, but travelling is not that difficult, and there is the danger that you lose control and the intensity of control. If the scheme is in the office here (in Paris), I get in touch with it daily. Once you start to move out, you start the dangerous course of delegating which is something I'm not very good at. I'm more the kind of person who puts their fingers everywhere.
TAN:How would you describe the ideal client for a museum?
RP:The ideal client for a museum first is not timid and tells you the truth.
Dominique de Menil was a classically good client. She was very tough and stubborn, but was also very light in the sense that she would listen, but at the same time she knew what she wanted. A good client is not necessarily an easy client. A client with a strong character is normally much better. You do your job and he does his job. The advantage of a certain success is that you stop having bad clients because you select them. We take a very little portion of what we're offered. But in this process the chemistry is essential.
TAN: In addition to the New York Times headquarters and the masterplan for a Harlem campus of Columbia University in NY, you have many US commissions for museums. Perhaps it is simply that more museum building is taking place in the US.
RP: Yes, this is quite evident. It is not just fashion. A generation of people have been collecting art with the help of a legal-fiscal situation [i.e., tax benefits for charitable gifts] that is not the same in Europe. Like Ray [Nasher]. He thought about putting this collection that he loves like his life into other museums. He wanted a beautiful house for his collection that was joyful and full of light, but he didn't find it. So in some way it became natural for him to make that generous gesture of buying a piece of land in the middle of Dallas and building the museum there.
TAN: Many architects today are commissioned to make iconic buildings as symbols of a city or an institution. Some critics believe these buildings can fail to serve the art. What is your position in the art vs architecture debate?
RP: I believe architecture is art, of course. It's art, but it's not sculpture because it's made for making service to something else.
Architecture is art that you do to shelter something else-a house, a family, a museum, a concert hall. There is always that service. Now, there are different ways to do this. One way is just functional, but I don't think this is enough because architecture is not just the art of making buildings; it is also the art of telling stories, like other art. It is an art of expression. So one way to make architecture is giving strength to the functional aspect. Another one is, without forgetting the functional aspect, to give strength to poetry, to emotion and poetry. This is where the difference is very subtle.
Take the Menil Foundation for example. It is not a space that you can say is neutral. The famous theory about making neutral space for museums because then the architecture does not compete with the art is a stupid idea. If you make a neutral space you kill art. You cannot give up as an architect. You still have to give to your work and your space a character. In some way that is why the research we have done on the Menil is about atmosphere.
The Kimbell in Fort Worth was probably the first time when I was in a museum where I felt this idea of emotion. The natural light in there was not really to illuminate the painting, but it is very emotional. The Kimbell is a very emotional building. In some way the Menil Collection is taking from the Kimbell-not in the form of the building, but the spirit, in the idea of the atmosphere. In some ways, the little Ray Nasher Museum is also taking from there. It is about the idea that if you do not want to compete with art, and you still want to give a character to the museum, you have to work on the immateriality of the museum-light, vibration, proportion.
TAN: What about the idea of "the white cube" as the best gallery format to show art?
RP: I do not think it's good. The closest thing to the white cube that is still good is the industrial space, the loft. But a loft is not a white cube. The loft is already quite interesting because it is in some ways more generous, more open.
We are working on the Paul Klee Museum in Bern, Switzerland. This is where all the Klee collection from the Bern Museum will be in about one year's time. The existing museum in the centre of the city is what you might call "the white box." The theory is that because it is a white box, Paul Klee is safe. But when you go there, you realise that that white box is even able to kill Klee, because it is too neutral, it is dead. It is not giving light. It is killing art. I'm not saying that to make art happy you have to make anything extravagant. Actually I am saying the opposite. But the white cube theory I do not believe.
TAN: Do you consider the collections that will go into the museum?
RP: Of course, this is where we start. The first thing I did when I started to work on the Menil was to go with Dominique to the famous barn [where her work was housed at Rice University] and to look at each piece. When we worked on the little Cy Twombly pavilion next door, Cy came to my office when he was in Italy and we started to talk, then we visited him and we started to work together. And when we started to work in Basel with Beyeler, immediately we made 1:10 scale models of all 125 pieces of the collection.
Even with Ray, I've been touching each piece of his collection 10 times, because it is essential to understand.
TAN: What are the challenges and issues involved in making museums today?
RP: You were asking about the risk of museums today. One is to make museums with too much design, too much of a gesture so they do not do their job correctly, they do not make their service well. But the other risk for me is success. When I was a young guy with Richard Rogers we designed the Pompidou in Paris and that was the moment at the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies when museums were very dusty and boring places. I'm more than happy about the idea that museums finally became now very successful places. But they can have too much success and often you are unable to enjoy art because it polluted by crowds and noise. Museums may become so big that they lose their real function-the silent enjoyment and contemplation of art. Museums today have a double life-they have a sacred life and a profane life. If you do not do something to save both of those dimensions you are in trouble. This is what we are trying to do in the Chicago Art Institute, in the Harvard Art Museums, and in the new High in Atlanta. I think we have to accept that the museums will only survive if they will be able to do their job, but at the same time we have to accept that art contemplation is a sacred function. It is something that needs calm and silence.
TAN: Can you actually build that kind of experience into your architecture?
RP: I think so. I don't know, but this is what we are trying to do. Of course I am not suggesting to make a building divided into two, with two different souls. But I think it is not impossible to make a structure where in some way you enter, and when you move up onto the second or third floor and into the art space, metaphorically you take your shoes off and you change speed.
TAN: Your buildings tend to be made with planes, with straight lines. What do you think of "expressionist" architecture or abstract "sculptural" architecture, like that of Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry?
RP: I love Frank. He's a good friend, especially a good friend of my little son. I keep telling him it is because they have they have the same mental age: my son is four years old and Frank happily enough is like a little boy. He's a great architect, he's a great sculptor. It's not true that he makes buildings that don't work. The buildings that Frank does functionally work well. Calatrava is also a great guy. He does a bit too much sometimes, but again, I think in the museum you have to accept that art is the focus.
TAN: You prefer to compose in planes and straight lines?
RP: Yes, but not always. For example, in Rome last year we just finished a concert hall made up of three different halls and everything there is round, everything there is a curve. If you take Kansai Airport in Japan, it is like an immense two-kilometre-long glider. It's a curve. But when you have to hang up a painting, you have to hang it up on planes not curves. You may ask what I think of the Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim in New York, which is a great building, better for sculpture than for painting. It's so good that in the end, you excuse it.
TAN: Which artists influenced your architecture?
RP: All of them. You know I have a little collection, though I never bought a piece of art myself. I was very friendly with Matta. With Bob Rauschenberg we have been working together on a job in Italy for a church. We were trying to work with Roy Lichtenstein, but it never worked out unfortunately because he died. Mark diSuvero is a great friend, and Jean Tingeuly and I were good friends, enjoying life, drinking in the evening and smoking little cigars. I've been a very close friend to people like Luciano Berio, John Cage, Pierre Boulez. This is what is great about art: there are no frontiers. You are friends among writers, and you steal from writers, the next day you steal from musicians, the next day you steal from a sculptor or a painter. It is always like that. It's a continuous robbery one from the other. But it's a robbery without a mask.
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html