One of the best things about the Baltimore Museum of Art is its main building, a masterpiece of institutional architecture designed by John Russell Pope, the same architect who created the Jefferson Memorial, the National Gallery of Art and the National Archives. As the museum grew over the years, it has been enlarged, and in 1983 and 1994, two wings were added, in contemporary styles.
Unfortunately, they added nothing to the beauty of the whole and are already proving both aesthetically and practically obsolete.
(Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) - The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD. The Contemporary Wing includes works by Andy Warhol among other artists.
On Sunday, the BMA officially unveils a major renovation to the 1994 contemporary wing, reopening galleries that have been closed since January 2011. The refreshed space is part of a $24.5 million rebuilding campaign that will include both visible and hidden improvements throughout the museum. Unseen by visitors to the refurbished Contemporary Galleries is a new roof. More tangible changes include the removal of two intrusive structural columns, new lighting, the removal of dark glass doors at the entrance, and a paint and flooring makeover that replaced gray walls with white and warmed up the flooring to a natural color.
Doreen Bolger, director of the museum, says the goal was to reinstall the collections “in fresh and engaging ways” and to bring what is on view up-to-date, including display of more recent work. Bolger focuses particularly on improvements to the lighting. A fluorescent system has been replaced with halogen units that can be dimmed. That small improvement means lighting levels can be reduced to safely accommodate photography and delicate works on paper, making it possible to mix up displays with different media.
And that in turn means that monumental works from the 1970s and ’80s can cohabit with complementary works on paper and other smaller pieces, varying the rhythm of exhibitions and introducing variety into the galleries.
Also new to the galleries is a black-box space for video, an obligatory medium for any synoptic sense of where contemporary art has been for the past two decades and where it is going today.
The architectural changes, overseen by architect Michael Craft, can’t touch the essential ugliness of the building itself, a concrete structure that feels cold and charmless as you pass out of the older galleries in the Pope building. Connected to the Pope building by a glass-walled passage, the 1994 contemporary building created light issues for the adjacent galleries holding early-20th-century works. By installing a baffle to limit light penetration, it was possible to remove dark glass doors that formerly divided the contemporary wing from the Pope building. It isn’t an ideal solution — the baffle looks rather odd unless you understand its purpose — but it is definitely an improvement.
As always, the ideal is to open up the visitor’s sense of the museum, so that it is easier to see into adjoining spaces and comprehend the basic geography of the space. Long views, a hint of the outside world and natural light, and a clear sense of the progression of spaces seems to help lessen the fatigue many people feel after an hour or more in an art museum.
This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post contributors aren’t staff, but may write articles or columns. In some cases, contributors are sources or experts quoted in a story.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
Loading...
Comments