The Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles (A+D) has announced an institutional restructuring initiative as well as a transformation focus on digital and traveling exhibitions and programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement published by the museum, Executive Director Anthony Morey and Deputy Director Leila Wahba write, “A+D Museum’s mission to be a platform and space of engagement for our architects, designers, creatives, and audience must shift with the needs of our community. As a team we have heard the response to societal shifts and as a family we recognize the opportunity to transform ourselves in response to this place in time."
The museum leaders add, "We are thrilled to evolve, to become a more dynamic expression of our mission and our supporter’s needs. By transitioning to a hybridized platform structure, we release ourselves from a solitary physical presence and embrace a more expansive presence, a long discussed goal of our Beyond Walls Strategic Planning Committee. We will continue to provide exploratory programming through digital platforms and short-term community-driven physical exhibitions and events as a means of reaching a wider, increasingly inclusive audience."
In the announcement, Nancy Levens, president of the A+D board, writes, “If there was ever a time for an institution devoted to architecture, design and the path forward to our best world, this is it. We have been talking about a ‘Beyond Walls’ approach for the past year. It is the only way to be as inclusive as we have envisioned for ourselves.”
Duan Tran, co-chair of the Beyond Walls Strategic Planning Committee, states, “Evolution is a natural process. One that the A+D Museum continues to be uniquely positioned for as a leading edge
progressive design institution that embraces diversity, inclusion, and dialogue through unparalleled artist, designer, and community engagement.”
As part of the shift, the museum will vacate its physical museum space in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District to focus on a new "network format" that will allow the institution to " focus all its resources more purely on its values beyond the limitations of a building.” In addition to retaining its staff, the museum will also add a new digital researcher to its team. The museum expects to vacate its current facilities at the end of June.
5 Comments
That's a shame, despite the grandiose blathering. Who writes this stuff?
It hit me that my comment could be taken as critical of Antonio and this entry, which it's not. The topic is timely, important, and unfortunate. My beef is with the pretentious style of the museum's statement. Ideas, even big ones, can often be communicated plainly.
Ugh. I realize that COVID is placing a tremendous amount of strain around small to mid-size institutions across the board and that leasing commercial spaces is among the highest expenses incurred by said establishments, but it would be a tragedy to permanently shut the A+D and make it only digital.
First and most obvious are issues of access to the data. If the museum is really intended to address the general public as a whole and not just the architecture and design community, then we need to acknowledge that it will be difficult to have a consistent user experience because everyone will have a different means of access via the device they are using to connect with. It’s not a difficult task for a savvy web developer, but I hope that A+D will make a functionally coherent website that allows us to navigate the content in an engaging but legible manner, across platforms.
This may seem trivial, but the benefit of a physical museum is that you don’t need a broadband connection or a reliable computer. Duh?
Who doesn’t have a smartphone or computer these days? The answer is shockingly more than you think, and even if you have a smartphone, people hawkishly guard their minutes like the Karens clipping coupons in Kentucky.
Where is the spirit of Shigeru Ban and the nomadic museum? Isn’t there some massive parking lot somewhere owned by SOMEONE influential in the architecture and design community where we can design a temporary museum to house exhibitions until things return to normal? Is an online "museum" really a "museum"? .... serious curatorial questions that need addressing, methinks.
Presumably that's where the "network format", where their physical presence will be more "partnerships" and "short-term community-driven physical exhibitions and events" aka pop-ups, come in.
It took me a few reads of the statement from the museum to come to a similar conclusion to you, Nam. More pop-ups, co-sponsored exhibitions with various other schools and institutions, and some form of an online/interactive component. I was initially stuck questioning how this is actually going to work, but I guess we can't anymore look at these problems in a rigid, conventional way.
What type of work /mediums do you think will be most successful in drawing engagement from audiences in this new curatorial space?
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