>Please be careful when using gross generalities about architecture firms....
> and (we) have worked with (museum) planners ... for most projects of this
sort....
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Forrest Courtney


Forrest, Jessica, et al.,

I rest my case.

I've always believed that architects work best when the client provides a
well thought out program of the functional and inspirational objectives of
the institution.  It tends to free the architect from worrying about
non-architectural issues and to respond creatively to the established
conditions.  Of course this does not happen too often.  Some museums, such
as the MOMA in New York, involve their professional staff intimately in
almost every aspect of a new project, including the selection of the
architect, while retaining utmost respect for the architectural design
process. More likely, Trustees provide only a general overview of what they
believe the museum should be like in the new building and trust the
architect to fill in the details.

Architectural firms jumped into the breach by adding exhibition design
capabilities to their practice.  Now there are firms with lots of
experience designing museums, and there are those with little experience
and wonderful ideas.  Architects live, eat and dream architecture,
something you would expect of the person entrusted with the task of
creating the most important tangible image of the museum.  Some are also
brilliant exhibition designers. None of that obviates the need for a
knowledgeable, experienced professional on the museum service side, someone
whose life is inextricably intertwined with what happens in a museum after
it opens, whether it be a Museum Planner, Exhibits Director or even the
Director, to be the advocate, the champion as it were, for the audience and
the efficacy of the museum experience.

To cite a few examples, I was either Director or Director of Exhibits
working with Ed Barnes and the Pentagram Group at the IBM Gallery of
Science and Art, E. Verner Johnson and the Hillier Group at the Liberty
Science Center, and a small firm, McCarthy Associates at the Old Pueblo
Museum in Tucson.  In different ways each architect brought incredible
skill and imagination to these different projects.  Yet there were many
aspects of the aspiration of each of the museums that were not common to
the others.  The nuances of each made them unique institutions with an
equally unique set of desirable physical assets.  In each case plans had to
be altered as all parties, Trustees, CEOs, museum staff and architects,
came to understand the potential emerging from the architectural and the
programmatic planning.

Constructing a new home is a major transformation for an institution.  Sort
of like a child entering puberty.  Lots of ideas about the role of the
institution are bandied about and options that were never before considered
now seem plausible.  The interplay of the emerging architectural design and
the exhibition program concept open new possibilities for exhibitions and
building efficiencies, and even for the role of the museum in the
community.  The Museum Planner helps all parties to understand this process
and work with it to help the architect build for the future of the
institution.

David Hupert

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