Bilbao Effect goes to renovation and rehab of the existing museum and gallery space in "old" Europe--preview of five current projects. WSJ l related
Museum Makeovers: Five Other Projects

J.S. Marcus reports on the current renovation and expansion work at Europe's major art galleries.

October 26, 2007

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"My favorite museums are those in which the history of the collection and the history of the building go together," says German photographer Thomas Struth, known for his photographic series shot in the world's great art museums. At the top of his list is Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, which houses the Habsburgs' enormous collection of paintings, sculpture, antiquities and curiosities in an elaborate building whose ornate frescoed interior has changed remarkably little since the museum opened in 1891.
[Renovations at the Kunstkammer; and below, sculpture covered during the work.]
Renovations at the Kunstkammer; and below, sculpture covered during the work.

The museum is in the final phase of two decades of modernization to reorganize the space and reinstall collections. The sculpture and decorative-arts galleries, known as the Kunstkammer, are being renovated by Viennese architect and set designer Hans Hoffer -- who also reinstalled the museum's collection of antiquities -- and are scheduled to reopen around 2009.

Mr. Hoffer describes the new installation concept as "heterogeneous," rather than "scientific," recalling the collection's origins in the pre-Enlightenment court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, whose diverse and often eccentric collection featured everything from Bruegel paintings to bejeweled bezoars, mineral deposits found in the entrails of goats, thought at the time to have mysterious medicinal properties. Mr. Hoffer, reflecting his interest in the theater, will use spotlights and other variations in lighting to emphasize the richness of the collection. The renovation will even add electricity for the first time to some of the galleries.

The Kunstkammer -- known for its precious objects like Benvenuto Cellini's Renaissance salt cellar, returned last year after having been stolen in 2003 -- is "the most important collection of its kind in the world," says museum director Wilfried Seipel. The Kunstkammer is "the last element" in the museum's modernization, says Mr. Seipel. He says that it has also been the most difficult, due the large amount of gallery space, the diversity of the objects and the particular security needs of the collection's many priceless works.

While work continues in the galleries, which make up one-quarter of the main museum, highlights of the collection will be shown elsewhere in the museum.

The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

While Europe's other great art museums are running out of room, the Hermitage -- housed in a complex of buildings whose centerpiece is the czars' former Winter Palace -- has the opposite problem. Though its collections include millions of works of art, the museum, with its thousands of rooms and hundreds of thousands of square meters of exhibition space, has to figure out a way to use what it already has.
[Structural plans for the Hermitage complex.]
Structural plans for the Hermitage complex.

The museum hired Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam think tank, AMO, to create a master plan to address "the problems the Hermitage is facing in the 21st century," Mr. Koolhaas says.

The problems are conceptual, says Hermitage director Michael Piotrovsky. The purpose of the new master plan is to find a way to turn the traditional "market-oriented economy of museums into something more cultural," he says.

Mr. Koolhaas says his plan will promote conservation instead of explicit modernization, and will emphasize art scholarship instead of art exhibitions. "Basically the project will physically change as little as possible," he says. "It seems more interesting to focus on what you can do with existing architecture as a tool, rather than imagining extensions or new architecture."

In the immediate future, construction work will only affect the complex's General Staff building and not the Winter Palace galleries. The 19th-century building will house the Hermitage's collection of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings, including "The Dance" by Henri Matisse, as well as works by living artists. The building was derelict, and Mr. Koolhaas proposed incorporating elements of the ruin into the exhibition space.

Mr. Piotrovsky says although only certain concepts from that plan will be used, the overall approach will form the basis for the master plan, which is meant to take up to three decades to implement.

"In the museum world there has been a lot of improvisation and short-term thinking," Mr. Koolhaas says. He says he hopes the Hermitage plan will encourage a way to think longer term.

The Louvre, Paris

The dramatic makeover of the Louvre in the 1980s and '90s, which restructured and reorganized the palace's sprawling hodgepodge of spaces into one coherent museum, still sets the standard for museum modernization. The old Louvre "was a mess," says I.M Pei, the Chinese-born American architect who oversaw the transformation. "People did not penetrate the Louvre before, now people want to go through it. That's a great accomplishment."
[A rendering of the new Islamic collection galleries, with an iridescent-glass roof.]
A rendering of the new Islamic collection galleries, with an iridescent-glass roof.

Today the Louvre continues to evolve. Mr. Pei is working on a plan to eventually redesign the space beneath his iconic glass-and-metal pyramid -- the Louvre's main entrance -- to accommodate an anticipated increase in visitors.

Meanwhile, a new building constructed inside one of the smaller courtyards will house the newly created Islamic collection. Italian architects Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti are building a tent-like, iridescent-glass structure that, like Mr. Pei's pyramid, will be in striking contrast to the palace's classical facades. It is scheduled to open in 2010.

The Louvre's real expansion plans are taking place outside of Paris. An affiliated museum designed by French architect Jean Nouvel is set to open in Abu Dhabi in 2012, and a satellite museum will open in Lens, in northeastern France, in 2009. As part of a new approach, the Louvre-Lens, designed by the Tokyo-based firm Sanaa and the New York-based firm Imrey Culbert, plans to store part of the Louvre's permanent collection in visible facilities. It "will help people understand the intense work and care that is needed for objects," says Imrey Culbert principal Celia Imrey.

The Museum Island, Berlin

"There is a German condition I don't experience in other places," says David Chipperfield, lead architect for the master plan to redevelop Berlin's Museum Island, an ensemble of museum buildings in the heart of the former East Berlin. It's the public's "interest in understanding the meaning of projects -- one is always discussing history."
[A rendering of the James Simon Galerie, the new entrance for the complex.]
A rendering of the James Simon Galerie, the new entrance for the complex.

The Museum Island complex is on a small island in the Spree River, which winds its way through Berlin. At its peak in the years before the rise of the Nazis, the island's five museums -- devoted to the history of art, from ancient Egyptian artifacts to German Expressionist paintings -- made up one of the world's great concentrations of human knowledge. The buildings were severely damaged during World War II, and the collections were divided between East and West Berlin.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many of the collections were reunited, and an ambitious master plan to rebuild and reimagine the complex was devised under Mr. Chipperfield's guidance. "One of our biggest tasks," says Mr. Chipperfield, who was given the commission in 1998, "has been to broker this as a public project."

Mr. Chipperfield, who this month won the Stirling Prize for the best new work by a British architect for a separate German project, the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, is renovating two of the museums -- the Pergamon Museum, the island's best-known, housing the Pergamon Altar, a masterpiece of ancient Greek art known for its marble friezes, to be finished in 2015; and the Neues Museum, meant to house the city's Egyptian collections and in ruins until restoration began in 2003, expected to be finished in 2009. He is also building a museum, the James Simon Galerie, scheduled to be finished in 2012, which will serve as a de facto entrance and unifying element for the island's other buildings.

The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The biggest challenge so far in the Rijksmuseum renovation hasn't been space or materials, but cyclists.

The original 19th-century building by Pierre Cuypers, housing a peerless collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, had proved too small for an age of mass tourism. But Amsterdam's bicyclists objected to the renovation plan's disruption of the bike lanes that run through the center of the building.
[The plan for new galleries at the Rijksmuseum.]
The plan for new galleries at the Rijksmuseum.

After a two-year fight, the bike lobby won, and the architects -- Seville-based Cruz & Ortiz, best known for its work on Seville's 1991 train station -- went back to the drawing board. In 2003 the museum closed to begin the amended renovations; it's expected to reopen in 2010. "Finally it will be a good project," says architect Antonio Ortiz, though he adds "in my mind it could always have been better."

The main goal is to free up gallery space by taking all the offices out of the building, as well as structurally removing minor additions that had cluttered up the original building's courtyards, which will now be enclosed in glass. "The public will know where they are instead of being lost in endless rooms," says Taco Dibbits, head of the Rijksmuseum's department of fine arts. Offices and the museum library are being rehoused in nearby buildings also designed by Cruz & Ortiz.

"The building had become an obstacle for the enjoyment of the art," says Mr. Dibbits. He says the hallmark of the new Rijksmuseum will be its mixed display, "combining the fine and the decorative arts, as well as historical objects." He says the emphasis will be on quality rather than quantity -- and that, unlike other museum renovations, the Rijksmuseum's will actually lead to a small decrease in the number of objects on display.

During the renovations the Philips Wing will remain open, housing the collection's highlights, including Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" and "The Jewish Bride," and Vermeer's "The Kitchen Maid" and "Woman Reading a Letter"; other key works have been lent to traveling exhibitions.