A View from the Pacific: Re-Envisioning the Art Museum

"I myself had difficulty finding this book! Perhaps it was slightly mean to choose such an esoteric text, but once I did locate a copy, I found it incredibly valuable and illuminating. What I came to appreciate, to an extent I hadn’t previously, was just how influential Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation between 1988 and 2008, had been in this field. Certainly he was a familiar figure in the sector, but he had for a long time been regarded as very left field, a controversial figure in the broader museum community. If that much was clear to me, I did not realise until reading this book the extent of his thoughtfulness and independent mindedness. Practically everything he did when he took the helm of the Guggenheim wasn’t motivated by the kind of vulgar commercialisation that he was accused of in museum circles, but an articulate philosophy of what the museum should stand for. Krens had trained as an artist, and became the director of the Williams Museum, in Williamstown, where he worked with a cluster of people, one of whom was Michael Govan. Krens was also involved in the establishment of Mass MOCA, the big industrial Museum in western Massachusetts, where he collaborated with another young protégé, Joseph Thomson. After working as Tom Krens’ assistant, Michael Govan went on first to run to the Dia Beacon , and then in 2006, he went on to LACMA. What you realise is that this trio of professionals helped to create a template for the museum-going experience that has carried well into the twenty first century. “Museums in the UK remained open even during the Second World War” There’s a wonderful photo of these Young Turks , close friends at the Williams College Art Museum, in January 1988. They went on to a very considerable extent to change and revolutionise how museums were perceived. It is important to note that all three were trained as artists, not as art historians, so they were against the art historical view of the museum and very much in favour of the idea that a museum’s rationale should be generated by artists, not by historians or critics. It was difficult to piece this narrative together because none of them had written a lot in public about what they were doing. I think in a way they saw themselves as revolutionaries within the camp. Previously unaware of their key ideas, I came to understand just how thoughtful they were. They generated these ideas and beliefs together in the mid-80s. LACMA is an instructive focal point. It has yet to reopen after a thorough restructuring. Although it hasn’t even opened yet, it has already been the subject of enormous discussion, debate and controversy . People in positions of cultural responsibility do not typically go about their business without forethought, care and belief. Particularly when we are talking about construction budgets that run into the hundreds of millions. This lecture given by Michael Govan was one that I stumbled upon while investigating the controversy. Although a slim volume, it is very considered. As a mission statement for art museums, it is very worthwhile, and makes clear that everything Govan is doing at LACMA is the result of careful assessment and belief. While you may not agree with his approach, it’s certainly profoundly observed, and not at all a commercial quick fix as it is often caricatured to be – as were Krens’ plans for the Guggenheim when originally launched. It is all very revealing. Often museum directors, while they may consent to be interviewed, tend to be a bit bland or reticent. We rarely get the full thoughtfulness of individuals who may in fact be visionaries. Govan first went to LACMA in 2006, and it has been practically 15 years of controversy ever since. On arrival, he had already talked to Peter Zumthor , the Swiss Pritzker Prize winning architect, about a redesign. There was no big public competition. Why? Well Govan had obviously visited Kolumba Museum in Köln, designed by Zumthor. He clearly felt, as do I having visited for my book, that Kolumba is a beautiful model for a museum. It is an institution which is well integrated, creating a total environment for the experience of works of art which are not movable or arbitrary. Art objects are placed with extreme care and thoughtfulness. You can tell that Govan arrived at LACMA very much fired up, with the ambition to use Zumthor. While that’s something you can do relatively straightforwardly in a private museum , once you get into a public institution, and certainly one with a $750 million redesign budget, it’s not plain sailing. The project also involved the demolition of the existing civic museum, which may not have been much loved, but had been there since the mid 60s. Interestingly for me, Govan’s early reception in 2006 was very supportive. The existing building – neither earthquake proof nor particularly distinguished architecturally, and set to cost $2 billion to renovate – nobody really minded the idea of it being demolished then. A decade later and suddenly, the existing LACMA comes to be considered a monument to a particular era of civic museums, and fondness for the original grows. All at once, LACMA becomes extremely contentious. In a way, I feel a lot of sympathy for Michael. It’s taken so long that somehow the climate of opinion he now faces is vastly different from what it was at the outset. Given the lead times involved with projects like these, that’s not totally unusual. The project appears to be going through what project managers call ‘value engineering’. Zumthor has been compelled to reduce the floor-to-ceiling height from something like 16 foot to 14 foot. This may seem like a small thing, but since everything about a Zumthor museum is about the quality of space and the quality of the light, I have this horrible anxiety on behalf of both the architect and the director that, in the process of cheeseparing, the original conception, which was a grand architectural design, could be downgraded. We will see."