Hello everyone,
I thought this recent column of Hilton Kramer's in the Observer would
be of interest to members of this list.  Gehry's Guggenheim as
'aesthetic standard?'  Interesting from many angles.

Happy new year,

Stephanie Murg
Harvard University
[log in to unmask]

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This column ran on page 1 in the 1/7/2002 edition of The New York
Observer.

Frank Gehry's Syndrome Makes Museums Show Biz
by Hilton Kramer

Why is it that announcements of new art-museum construction, which
used to bring cheer to so many art lovers, are nowadays more likely to
generate a feeling of suspicion and dread? Is it because we no longer
have reason to believe that the creation of new museum buildings will
do much to enhance our experience and understanding of art itself? I
believe so. Indeed, there is often more reason to believe that the
construction of new museum buildings will only serve as a substitute
for, or alternative to, the experience of art. In other words, a
diversion and a distraction.

I was reminded of this melancholy development the other day, when I
found myself reading a lengthy story in The New York Times headlined
"It’s Museum Time Down South; From Virginia to Louisiana, a Building
Boom for Culture." As often happens in the case of The Times, the
subhead on this story proved to be misleading. For the story wasn’t
about a "Boom for Culture"; it was about money, prestige and
strategies of economic development. It was about tourism and trophy
architecture.

The sums of money involved are certainly head-spinning, especially in
the current economic climate. A new building for the Mobile (Ala.)
Museum of Art, scheduled to open later this year, is expected to cost
a mere $15 million–a paltry figure in today’s museum-construction
boom. The Times story also reported that "New art museums, or large
additions to existing ones, are being planned, built and opened in
more than a dozen cities." In Florida, the Norton Museum of Art in
West Palm Beach is raising $20 million for a new wing, only a few
years after raising $30 million to double its size. Museums in Tampa,
Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale have also launched building campaigns.

Two major construction projects are in the works for North Carolina,
and two more in Georgia, with projected costs totaling more than $150
million. And more, too, in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana
and Virginia, at who knows what the cost. As for what future visitors
to these new or expanded museum facilities will have to look at once
they’re built, that turned out to be something of a downer and not to
be dealt with in any detail. There was only a brief mention of the
fact that the directors of some of these expanding museums "are still
uncertain what they will hang on their new walls."

What does appear to be a certainty is that museum architecture will be
freakier and freakier, for the first priority on the agenda of this
boom is for a building guaranteed to cause a sensation in the media.
Call it the Frank Gehry scenario. As the Times story reported, "Frank
Gehry, the architect whose dazzling Guggenheim Museum turned the
dreary Spanish port city of Bilbao into a worldwide tourist
destination," is clearly going to be used as a standard–not an
aesthetic standard, of course, but a publicity standard. Forget
architecture. Forget art, too. This is show business, where the box
office is the only measure of success.

Mercifully, the Times story did contain one cautionary observation by
a museum executive–Diane Lesko, the executive director of the Telfair
Museum of Art in Savannah, Ga., which is expected to open a new $18
million building, designed by Moshe Safdie, in 2004. "I would hope
every new building is being built for a reason, to fill a need, and
not just for vanity," she said. "If you do it just to pull out works
in storage that are not first or even second tier, you’re not going to
make it. People may come once to see the building and the display of
the collection, but that’s it." Yet there’s no reason to believe that
today’s (or tomorrow’s) freaky architecture is itself to be regarded
as permanent. After all, the same Times story reported that Atlanta’s
High Museum of Art, which was designed by Richard Meier and which
opened to much acclaim in 1983, is also in the process of raising some
$100 million for renovating the building, adding a new wing and so on.
I thought Mr. Meier’s design of the High Museum was hopelessly
inappropriate as a place for exhibiting serious works of art,
especially paintings, from my very first visit–so, alas, did the High’
s first director, who once burst into tears when attempting to explain
to me his long list of criticisms of the building. But that’s the way
it often is with trophy-museum architecture.

When you add up all these millions and millions of dollars for new
museum construction and come to realize that not a dime of it will be
devoted to acquiring first-rate works of art for the museums’ expanded
exhibition space, you have a vivid sense of the twisted priorities
that now govern museums–and not only in this country, of course. It’s
a melancholy situation, and there is no sign that it’s likely to be
reversed anytime soon.

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