Art and Architectural Space: Museums and other exhibition spaces or how artists learn to love architects

art and architectural space
museums and other exhibition spaces or how artists learn to love architects

Over the last two decades, innumerable new museums, art galleries and other exhibition spaces have been built and opened all over the globe. The most extreme growth happened in China, where the number of museums went up from 300 by 1980 to estimated 3000 museums by 2015. In urban discourses, new museums and buildings for art have been considered as drivers for ´cultural sustainability´ of cities.
The notion is diffuse and the reality is more an economic centred ´city branding´ to help the promotion of tourism. What surprises: in many cities, the buildings for art are better known and more published and discussed than the art they accommodate. A lot of them are considered as art objects.
This raises two questions: How much is architecture itself a form of arts? (in Western architecture historically considered even the mother of all arts) - but more relevant: what are appropriate architectural spaces for presenting, exhibiting, contemplating, reflecting, meditating, discussing, enjoying, dissenting, debating creations of art.
Simplified, this is a question about the relation between package and its content. The urban and spatial question goes far beyond museums and other buildings for art: how in democratic societies should public spaces be supported by art and how can public art support ´cityness´ and meaning versus spaces of consumerism.
Famous but egocentric buildings with the main purpose of ´uniqueness´ often fail to be a ´home´, a large scale ´picture frame´ or a productive space for communicating art and even do not fulfil basic technical aspects in terms of a consistent indoor climate, optimized lighting or safety.
The lecture will focus on inspiring examples of spaces for art, where famous (Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor) or not so famous (Heinz Tesar, Gigon and Guyer) architects have designed buildings, which ´serve the arts and not the other way round´ (Renzo Piano on Fondation Beyeler). There resignation of loud and fashionable gestures focuses and supports on the content and the viewers and is far from being boring or banal.