Yesterday I was sitting in the waiting area of a car dealership outside of Columbus, Ohio. My car was having some service done for a recall and I came prepared for a wait, so I turned on a podcast, got a complimentary cup of coffee, and picked up my Nintendo Switch to continue where I left off replaying Final Fantasy X for the nth time. I’m not prodding for sponsorship (though I will listen to any offers!), but framing the importance of expediency in current criticism and online discourse. As the 15 minute podcast finished, I hopped onto Instagram and the first image that came up struck a nerve.
Senior art critic and columnist for New York Magazine Jerry Saltz had posted his advice for architects designing an art museum. The post had me shook. I felt an immediate urge to form a rebuttal, so I took a break from helping Yuna save the world of Spira, and went into my mobile image editor to challenge his points one by one.
Let's get a little deeper into what is so problematic about the post.
View this post on Instagram@art_forms_architecture My motto for architects buildings museums: 1. Do whatever the fuck you want to the OUTSIDE of your building. 2. Make certain the inside is generous and usable for art. Not trustee cocktails, stupid staircases, fundraising spaces, etc. 3. WE BUILT THIS CITY. 4. All museums are built on the backs of artists. 5. Fuck off if your don’t want to or are just too “creative” to make enough useable space for art.
A post shared by Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) on
ONE: Do whatever the fuck you want to the outside of the building.
This is so super correct that when I first read it I thought there was a chance I wasn’t going to mind the next four. I was quickly reminded that Saltz is a Baby Boomer who makes money by picking fights online in an attention economy, so that idea quickly dissolved. But to his credit, Saltz's point is one that is often overlooked. Architecture’s agency can be understood to contain the material conditions of the aesthetic decisions of the architect. In other words, the way it “looks,” or the “outside” of the building, is still our call. That is important to remember, because the envelope does important work: It connects and disconnects the space from the surrounding city along with containing very real material and labor ramifications. The way a museum looks changes the exterior space of nearby buildings, and if you’re sly about it, you can get a lot done with that bit of influence.
So, yes, do whatever the fuck you want to the outside of the building.
In other words, the way it “looks” or the “outside” of the building is still our call. That is important to remember, because the envelope does important work.
TWO: Make certain the inside is generous and usable for art. Not trustee cocktails, stupid staircases, or fundraising spaces etc.
The rant begins to fuel a foray into functionalism. Saltz conveys that a great museum shouldn’t encumber the attention, that it should be focused on the art—Think of the stylish exterior, gripping lobbies, and serene galleries of the Kimbell Art Museum or the Met Breuer. In opposition to this type of space, all museums today are searching for ways of making art more accessible, however. They are experimenting with more interactive exhibits and even things like mobile apps designed to personalize your visit. What Saltz is struggling with is that a good contemporary museum must be flexible enough to display art, but it must also accommodate shifts in institutional demands.
Make certain the inside is generous and usable for art AND trustee cocktails, staircases, and fundraising spaces. Calling for purely white-box interiors is traditionalist, and it obstructs innovation.
What Saltz is struggling with is that a good contemporary museum must be flexible enough to display art but also accommodate shifts in institutional demands.
THREE: WE BUILT THIS CITY.
I’m not exactly sure what this is supposed to encourage other than standing in as a kind of rallying cry for starving artists everywhere. It is especially uppity because the “we” of today is essentially Millennials with trust funds. Like it or not, the trustee cocktails built this city. With good space for fundraising and events, the museum will have more cash to invest in institutional goals, which likely include installations, performances, and public outreach. While money in the arts is certainly problematic, it is also, unfortunately, the reason why important historical artifacts can be kept and displayed with such care.
A desirable building can therefore extract more capital from board members that can be spread to a community’s benefit. To think that art museums exist solely due to the toil and labor of artists themselves is shortsighted pandering, leading right into the next point...
FOUR: All museums are built on the backs of artists.
The art world is fighting a stigma around its success stories being built from inheritance rather than merit. Critics like Brad Troemel, for example, are working to make light of this phenomenon to art world audiences and those trying to break into that industry. This is why I find it myopic to suggest that artists are the only ones whose backs hurt from a museum's construction. What about the labor force that literally built the museum? Or the neighborhood cafe that is passed over by wealthy patrons who stay in the museum as if they were suburbanites visiting a mall? And the volunteer docents? Or the unpaid intern who worked for the famous architect who designed the building?
Art museums are created by various patterns of exploitation inherent in capitalism and augmented by the so-called art market.
View this post on InstagramLmao it’s your weekly art world billionaire PR stunt.. the ultimate renewable energy resource
A post shared by Brad Troemel (@bradtroemel) on
FIVE: Fuck off if you don’t want to [or] are just too "creative" to make enough usable space for art.
As Saltz doubles down on his message with some classic “cool guy” f-bombs, let's get a few things straight. The political and economic forces behind any building are vast and concentrate near the top. While architects often find their job is to regulate between the desires of the wealthy board members and the public interest, they still have to make great space for the "average joe;" Artists represented by galleries and museums are not "average joes," however. The "average joe" is instead the public visitor who otherwise lacks exposure to art. This is who architects should stick up for by creating spaces that open up to an open mind, spaces that take pretentious art off of walls and bring it to life.
The pure white gallery box Saltz describes is the “inside-the-box” approach of the art world establishment. My motto is: break it.
View this post on InstagramHi @jerrysaltz I fixed your post. Happy to chat about it.
A post shared by Ryan Scavnicky (@sssscavvvv) on
Ryan Scavnicky is the founder of Extra Office. The practice investigates architecture’s relationship to contemporary culture, aesthetics, and media to seek new agencies for critical practice. He studied at L'Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and DAAP in Cincinnati for his Masters of ...
1 Featured Comment
contradiction is inherent to any position we take. We all know this in our dark hearts.
We advocate for classical architecture but want an open plan kitchen, and dont understand what all those spaces for servants are about. We want radical design, but only if its easy to understand. We know light is both a wave and as a particle, and this is fine with us. We want to house the poor and have an equal society, but not when it is visible to our actual lives. Good god what if one of our children had to go to school with one of theirs? Are we racist or not? Of course we are. Silly question.
All life is filled with Schrodinger's cats as we flicker between states of belief and disbelief about every damn thing that comes across our field of attention. This is why my family can be racist bigots and also happy at all the immigrants who fill their once empty church pews in their slowly dieing church...
Museums are for everyone, and elitist at the same time. They need to be white boxes and cool instagram chowder at the same time. They need to be places to collect money and avoid taxes, and educational centres for those who will never have the opportunity to fuck the system so politely. They are fair and unfair. Well made pieces of junk. and so on.
Ryan's post is great. Saltz is so fucking part of the system it is impossible to take his rant seriously (of course i love to follow him and his oddly disturbing sex fetish, plus his exaggerated hate for the orange head).
My feeling about Saltz' post is that we can have it all, if the architect (s) is/are good enough. Probably that is the only way to tell if the design is great or not. Ie, it works at covering all the bases and is still fucking awesome. Almost never happens. But the idea that we should actively discourage architects for going for the brass ring is not productive. Its like asking everyone to settle for less. Why do that? Especially with anything connected to the arts?
Makes no sense/Except I kinda get it/No wait....
All 8 Comments
pretty fucking spot on. contemporary museums are essentially elaborate tax shelters where architecture serves, at best, as a trophy jewel for whichever patron to bandy about in their social gatherings.
sanaa's new museum and DS+R's expansion of MoMA are some of the worst offenders of Saltz's ethos: banal white boxes stuffed inside novel facade treatments. but to his credit, some of the 'best' museums, like allied works' clifford still and the folk art museum (rip) are so novel that the architecture supersedes the function of the museum within: in the case of the folk art museum, it was literally self destructive.
i think the best balance is the parrish art museum, and i'm not exactly celebrating HdM because their original proposal was a silly thing and only got replaced with the current, more modest building during the financial crisis.
Ha. You are mostly right. But I think 99% of conversations, from social media to pop media, are so generic they are essentially meaningless. Pretty much every museum has its own story, architects, artists, wealth story, reason for being, etc. Just like every neighborhood has its own story. We just like to hide behind dogmas and tribes to make ourselves feel better.
Good job, Ryan.
As to Saltz, even a blind chicken occasionally finds a kernel of corn.l
Ryan says, “Calling for purely white-box interiors is traditionalist, and it obstructs innovation”. When discussing museum design, what is the “innovation” in service of?
I find it surprising that Saltz – a critic who presents himself as a radical voice – calls for conservative exhibition and museum design. The white cube galleries that he champions are endemic of the political and class structures he otherwise abhors.
While I can only speculate, Saltz’s understanding of architecture is limited to a strict binary in which spaces are either quiet or loud, without acknowledging the nuances, characters, and elements that intersect in an infinite number of ways. To put it more simply (all the while being that guy who has to bring Foucault into the discussion…), the museum is a heterotopic space. The museum is the Internet made corporeal. Saltz’s conception of the museum is still grounded in a mindset that traces its genealogy to a Beaux-Arts state of mind. He does not want “Art” to compete for attention with “Architecture,” neglecting to realize that the two can exist in a harmonious and beneficial relationship. In his Academia, “Art” is king and architecture is the faithful servant.
In terms of exhibiting contemporary art, the space in which the works are shown should demonstrate that it, too, is a byproduct of the same – or at least similar – cultural moment. If anything, like the article above more eloquently states, the architecture serves as the vehicle to help convey art to a larger public. Architecture has to work as a Rosetta Stone in its ability to assist as broad as swath of people as possible engage with art. If the building holds itself back and does not engage viewers in their art viewing, then it is not architecture. It is a shed.
I would recommend that Saltz (re?)read Brian O’Doherty’s essays, “Inside the White Cube.” Maybe he will rethink his position?
My BS detector comes on whenever a "critic" makes general statements without any concrete examples to prove his old white point. Same goes for the NYT fake architecture critic who goes to dumb urbanism conferences to shit on architects with no knowledge or experience of what architects do. Look around at all the best cities, museums, etc they are all architecture. All the worst are corrupt bureaucrats and moneyed developers.
"The political and economic forces behind any building are vast and concentrate near the top."
"A desirable building can therefore extract more capital from board members that can be spread to a community’s benefit."
which one is it? i don't mean to be petty, but you seem to have contradictory beliefs about what the state of the museum is in contemporary society. what is the material agency of architecture when its goal is upholding a state of things which undermines that agency? how can the role of labor be recognized when political and economic forces concentrate near the top, and are upheld? what is 'accessible' about an architecture which upholds concentration of wealth and power, or about impenetrable formal gestures? our view need not be binary, but it must not be contradictory.
contradiction is inherent to any position we take. We all know this in our dark hearts.
We advocate for classical architecture but want an open plan kitchen, and dont understand what all those spaces for servants are about. We want radical design, but only if its easy to understand. We know light is both a wave and as a particle, and this is fine with us. We want to house the poor and have an equal society, but not when it is visible to our actual lives. Good god what if one of our children had to go to school with one of theirs? Are we racist or not? Of course we are. Silly question.
All life is filled with Schrodinger's cats as we flicker between states of belief and disbelief about every damn thing that comes across our field of attention. This is why my family can be racist bigots and also happy at all the immigrants who fill their once empty church pews in their slowly dieing church...
Museums are for everyone, and elitist at the same time. They need to be white boxes and cool instagram chowder at the same time. They need to be places to collect money and avoid taxes, and educational centres for those who will never have the opportunity to fuck the system so politely. They are fair and unfair. Well made pieces of junk. and so on.
Ryan's post is great. Saltz is so fucking part of the system it is impossible to take his rant seriously (of course i love to follow him and his oddly disturbing sex fetish, plus his exaggerated hate for the orange head).
My feeling about Saltz' post is that we can have it all, if the architect (s) is/are good enough. Probably that is the only way to tell if the design is great or not. Ie, it works at covering all the bases and is still fucking awesome. Almost never happens. But the idea that we should actively discourage architects for going for the brass ring is not productive. Its like asking everyone to settle for less. Why do that? Especially with anything connected to the arts?
Makes no sense/Except I kinda get it/No wait....
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