The Albert Frey Aluminaire House that was donated and shipped to the Palm Springs Art Museum about five years ago will remain disassembled in its shipping container for at least another year or longer. Key issues raised by the city may keep visitors from ever walking through the Aluminaire House, even when reconstructed. — The Desert Sun
Frey’s experimental 1931 house (created in partnership with A. Lawrence Kocher) first came into the museum’s coffers in 2020 after a six-year bout in storage and a $600,000 gift, which was supposed to go towards its permanent installation on a corner plot on the Palm Springs Art Museum’s campus.
The PSAM and its staff are however working closely with DW Johnson to address previously unforeseen mandates for ADA accessibility and temperature control, a process which will involve the refabrication of many of its metal panels and cost upwards of $2 million, according to the director’s statements in The Desert Sun.
“There’s a big difference between a building that’s installed temporarily for an exhibition and a permanent building,” museum director Adam Lerner explained of his institutional predicament. “[It] is like somebody left a puppy at your doorstep. And you’re like, well, I have other plans, and I wasn’t expecting to raise a puppy right now. … But it’s a puppy. You can’t turn away a puppy.”
3 Comments
I wish they picked a better location on the museum grounds to site the building. That is if the rendering is still where they are going to place it on that corner with two flags in front of it.
That rendering is hilariously bad, the house is like 10' tall. Incidentally I was down there a few months ago and rode by the spot they're prepping for the house, and it seems to be more centrally situated in the open space south of the museum building.
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