Museums
for the 21st Century
by Josep
Maria Montaner
Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, Spain,
2003
160pp., illus. Paper, 17.31€
ISBN: 84-252-1924-8.
Reviewed by Dennis Dollens
Escola Superior d’Arquitectura
Universitat Internacional de Catalunya,
(Barcelona)
exodesic@mac.com
Over the past twenty years, as cultural
capital has become one of the lures and
pawns in city planning and regional development,
museums have become centerpieces for political
strategies and urban renewal. Even where
communities were little related to the
arts, museums have been "developed,"
eventually to find a place in their regions
as social and artistic programs became
known and available to new audiences.
Because of the premium put on public relations
and the media attention they attract,
such museums gave high-profile commissions
and invitations for stylistic expression
to innovative architects and generate
a sub-genre of architecture that has changed
the public’s view of museums–from
stuffy cultural bastions to centers of
contemporary cultural activity.
This same period roughly corresponds with
the coming of age of Josep Maria Montaner
as architect, professor, and architectural
critic in one of the most dynamic centers
of museum acquisition and building–Spain,
and more specifically, Barcelona. Montaner
has emerged as a critic who has personally
analyzed the design side, the urban side,
and the political side of museum development——and
not only in Spain but also in Europe,
South America, North America, and Japan.
Furthermore, coming from the geographic
base of Barcelona, a city whose various
newspapers and political culture have
long incorporated modern architecture
into the fabric of daily news reports
and urban life, Montaner has contributed
to the architectural debate, often in
the pages of El País. His
special expertise has eyes not merely
for notable museum production but also
for the nuisances of architectural design
and history that roll glamour and program
into a syntheses of ideas, both architectural
and philosophical.
Museums for the 21st Century
is a linked essay considered in chapters
with titles such as "The Museum as
an Extraordinary Organism," "The
Museum Museum," or "The Anti-Museum."
These essay-links are developed and intelligent
perspectives of a European critic looking
at global cultural facilities. The essays
are well served by the selection of photographs–some
of which are quite unexpected but very
welcome in a book with 160 pages. For
example, Bruce Goff’s Pavilion for
Japanese Art in Los Angeles is well placed
to introduce the chapter’s context
of works by Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer,
and Bernard Tschumi, while also noted
for Rem Koolhaas’s 2001 project for
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Another unexpected perspective occurs
in "The Minimalist Object,"
where Montaner begins his narrative text
in the west Texas town of Marfa, with
Donald Judd’s mammoth undertaking
of an art and architectural transformation
on the site an old army fort–a place
that one would hardly expect on the world’s
museum path but that has nevertheless
become a must on an art pilgrim’s
route (and a rewarding one at that).
Montaner’s concerns cover typologies
and program, and his rapid naming of example
architects lets him cover a broad spectrum
of designs. Projects by dozens of architects
are considered and framed by the organization
of individual chapters. Thus we find John
Soane, Álvaro Siza, Manuel Gallego,
Pablo Beitía, Daniel Libeskind,
Tod Williams & Billie Tsien, and the
team Gastón Alemán, Martin
Fourcade & Alfredo Tapia all in a
chapter titled "The Self-Involved
Museum." Leading off with the idiosyncratic
house-museum (1815-1837) of John Soane
may surprise, yet the chapter coalesces
with tectonic concerns Montaner frames
astutely: "In the self-involved museum
that capitalizes on the internal tension
of its objects and forms there survive
remains of the building type that has
been transformed, through exploration
or through interior complexity; through
the desire to open up to the outside;
through mechanisms to allow daylight to
enter; or through the deconstruction of
its original typological form."
Museums of the 21st Century
is not a guidebook; it is an itinerary
though some of the architectural views
and thoughts of a critic who has become
an increasingly important architectural
voice from Spain. As such, the book yields
one of the many, many keys to the culture-of-design
so strongly permeating Barcelona, a reflection
from and a refraction of a design culture
itself.
