The museum of the Third Kind: in which the author envisions new directions for the art museum as audiences change, architecture evolves, institutions subdivide and electronic resources expand our capabilities and expectations

Art in America, June-July, 2005 by Douglas Davis

Shells, Screens and Beyond: The Buildings

The transformed museum doesn't imply a loss of focus on exterior form. Rather, I think we'll gradually begin to recognize a distinct new esthetic--a baroque shell often in flux, often attracting attention to itself as an emblem of a singular identity, occasionally (or perhaps often) divorced from the inner configuration as well as the programs of the museum itself. I will not be surprised to find rakish vanguard museums adopting the "mutable screen" storefronts and walls already seen in Times Square, changing throughout the day, perhaps altering imagery or message to accord with the latest exhibition or performance inside, perhaps responding visually to faces and voices on the street. Taking a tentative step in this direction is Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron's striking Schaulager building (2003) on the outskirts of Basel, an art-warehouse-cum-museum which incorporates digital screens into its beveled facade.

Zaha Hadid's complex pile of rectangular concrete boxes in downtown Cincinnati, (6) loaded onto an incongruous transparent glass lobby that seems incapable of holding the weight above, has been interpreted by some as a "response" to the galleries and offices inside. But inside, the results are far more complex. The heights and shapes of its galleries differ greatly. Long, gently inclined staircases traverse the interior space, affording glimpses through slits in the gallery ceilings that act as peepholes to events above or below. Providing the unexpected at every turn, the structure is a de-centered "center," waiting for new expressions of art hardly predictable at this moment.

Further, one could scarcely have imagined the rising in tradition-bound Rome of another Hadid-designed institution dedicated to vanguard culture, named the "Museum of Art fox' the Twenty-First Century," or MAXXI, which is being built in a series of sweeping linear, transparent arms. Reflecting even less enthusiasm for "neutrality" is the winning design (2003) by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in the competition for the Eyebeam Museum in Manhattan, to be devoted primarily to new media, destined to rise in Chelsea--or perhaps nearby (it faces an uncertain future). The floors are intended to loop into one another, while video monitors are to offer views of objects and events occurring throughout the structure. On view at the Whitney in "Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller Scofidio" two years ago, (7) the project diverges sharply from the traditional museum's obsession with single focus within a static, meditative space. (8)

Elsewhere in Manhattan, innovative energy will shortly be poured into a lot at the intersection of the Bowery and Prince Street: the result will be a galvanized zinc-clad structure housing the new New Museum, where each floor will jut out independently from the building's core, the kind of feat to be expected from the severe band of Japanese architects chosen for the job--Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, founders of Tokyo's SANAA, Ltd. The new New will not only double the old New's space, but will house generous new media facilities. Indeed, director Lisa Phillips told me in conversation a few months ago that the new New would not only focus on media pyrotechnics but would use other buildings, here and around the world, for exhibitions and performances. In the meantime, having vacated its former home on nearby Broadway, the New has appropriately "decentered" itself, moving to a portion of the Chelsea Art Museum, where it recently presented a lively survey of the East Village art scene in its heyday [see p. 92, this issue]. Last fall, it also--in Third Kind mode--sponsored street projects in Lower Manhattan, including a temporary periscopelike piece by Julianne Swartz enabling passersby to communicate by sound and sight with the occupants of a venerable Bowers' flophouse, the Sunshine Hotel, which will be the museum's neighbor.