The art museum as a city or a machine for showing art?

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-138
Author(s):  
Kali Tzortzi
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
First Century ◽  
Morphological Properties ◽  
Industrial Building ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
National Museums ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Visual Construction

This paper presents the comparative analysis of the National Museum of Modern Art, in the Pompidou Centre, Paris, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano (1972–77), and the Tate Modern art gallery, London, the conversion of an industrial building by Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron (1995–2000). The two museums share a set of conspicuous similarities so that their parallel investigation seems self-evident. Both are large-scale national museums of modern art, extending over two floors, in buildings that constitute urban landmarks and are often seen as examples of the museum as a box [1a–b]. Their ground floors are conceived as a space you walk through, as a ‘piazza’; their spatial organisation is modular and flexible; their visual construction, punctuated by powerful views to the city. Moreover, they are guided by similar spatial ideas and share common fundamental morphological properties. Interestingly, their affinities extend to their collections – both begin with the turn of the twentieth century and extend to the twenty-first century; and their curatorial practices – as, for instance, the practice of reprogramming the galleries on a regular basis. But the experience of visiting the two museums is entirely different and each appears to have its own idiosyncratic spatial character, quite distinct from the other (described metaphorically by the museum designers as the museum as a city in the case of the Pompidou and as a machine for showing art in the case of Tate Modern). So, could these obvious similarities hide critical differences between the two museums?

scholarly journals Where flesh meets bone: dance in the modern art museum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Joelle McCurdy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Definition Of

Dance has recently taken up an increasing presence in major modern art museums as core curatorial programming, occupying galleries throughout exhibition hours. Although time figures prominently in emerging literature addressing this trend, spatial analyses remain fragmentary. Yet, dance is distinctive from other time-based media because of its heightened relationship with space. This raises an important question: how does dance’s newfound presence ‘re-choreograph’ the spaces of modern art museums? Extending the work of Henri Lefebvre, this dissertation adopts an expanded definition of museum space encompassing physical, social and conceptual domains. Dance, an art concerned with the shaping of space, is examined as a transformative force, productively intervening with the galleries, encounters, objects, and historical narratives comprising modern art museum space. In this study, purity and atemporality are identified as the preeminent principles organizing modern art museum space, and dance, an ‘impure’ and process-based art, is theorized as a productive contaminant, catalyzing change. Using this theoretical framework and Using this theoretical framework and evocative descriptions of Boris Charmatz’s 20 Dancers for the XX Century (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18-20 October 2013), dance’s unique collaboration with modern art museum space is analyzed. Socially, dance’s multisensuality pollutes museum goers’ ocularcentric experiences with art. Conceptually, dance diversifies understandings of objects and the androcentric history they uphold. Physically, dance is carving out new spaces, with performance venues being incorporated into the ‘bones’ of high profile institutions. Interspersed between these analytical chapters, evocative descriptions of Spatial Confessions (On the Question of Instituting the Public) by Bojana Cvejić and collaborators (Tate Modern, London, 21-24 May 2014) introduce observations beyond the analytical scope, opening up the liminal spaces of this document to ongoing inquiry. This dissertation contributes a sustained analysis of dance’s spatial impact on modern art museums. By investigating how dance intervenes with the limitations of the white cube, it critiques this supposedly ‘blank’ space, questioning its continued supremacy within these institutions. Moreover, as dance is ushered into performance venues within the museum’s expanding domain, this dissertation interrogates the modern propensity for specialization and master narratives pervading the spaces of these institutions, despite decades of interventional artistic and curatorial practices.

The National Gallery of Zimbabwe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda H. Hellman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
National Gallery ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
One Year ◽  
Contemporary Artists

The National Gallery of Zimbabwe is an art museum in Harare dedicated to collecting, preserving, and promoting Zimbabwean visual culture. Though the collection focuses on contemporary artists from Zimbabwe, its holdings are diverse, containing traditional and contemporary African along with European Old Master paintings—a reflection of the acquisition interests of the first director. Sir James Gordon McDonald (1867–1942), a friend and biographer of Cecil Rhodes, gifted £30,000 to found an art gallery in 1943. Ten years later in 1953 a board was established to raise funds, build the museum, and select a director. In 1956, Scotsman Frank McEwen (1907–1994) was appointed to the post of director. The Rhodes National Gallery was opened on 16 July 1957 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (renamed Harare, Zimbabwe in 1980). The institution changed its name to the National Gallery of Rhodesia in 1972, one year prior to McEwen’s resignation. One of McEwan’s projects was the Rhodes National Gallery Workshop School. Artists who participated in this early workshop, such as Thomas Mukarobgwa and John and Bernard Takawira, helped define Zimbabwean modern art. After Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 the National Gallery developed the BAT Workshop, which became the National Gallery School of Visual Art and Design in 2012.

scholarly journals Architecture of Alienation

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Dorita Hannah
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Spatial Dynamic ◽  
Social Alienation ◽  
Power Station ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Art And Architecture

This paper approaches the emergence, over the 20th century, of a public architecture that occupies sights/sites once associated with industry and social alienation, in this case the conversion of London’s Bankside Power Station into the Tate Modern Art Museum. Utilising Bertolt Brecht’s revolutionary theories on performance, the celebrated architecture of Herzog and De Meuron is investigated alongside ‘Double Bind’, an installation by the late Spanish artist Juan Muñoz whose work highlights the quality of isolation in the contemporary metropolis. In investigating architecture and installation, a space is opened up between the art and architecture revealing a performativity that engages with 20th century trauma and the crisis of the modern. This spatial dynamic forms an architecture of alienation where the participants are estranged from the environment, rendering them strangers, even within familiar environments ... tourists in their own land.

Inaugurating the “White Passage”: Art ‘76

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Hera
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
Exhibition Space ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract Within an art exhibition, the disposition of space is fundamental in experiencing artworks. A study of the exhibition space as discourse enmeshes art within a framework of relationship and processes instead of viewing art as an isolated and autonomous object. This paper features the case study of Art ‘76, the inaugural exhibition of Singapore's first large-scale institution of art, the National Museum Art Gallery (NMAG). The NMAG's opening in 1976 had been much anticipated by artists and the art audience since the 1960s, it was also an important milestone in the National Museum of Singapore's process of modernisation and revitalisation. During Singapore's post-independent period, the National Museum began to redefine itself as a civic museum focussing on Singapore's history and culture, shifting away from its previous incarnation of a research-focused colonial institution, the Raffles Library and Museum. Singapore was not alone in exploring the role of modern art in nation-building, as neighbouring Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand also began to moot for their own institution of modern art around the same period of time. Art ‘76 and the NMAG represent a case of distinct spatial typology that arose out of unique institutional and socio-political dynamic in post-independent Singapore. In analysing the legacy as well as the relationships and contentions that shaped the spatial articulation of Art ‘76, this paper studies existing visual and oral archive, as well as critically evaluating the concepts of space as a subject of historical study.

Spaces for Modern Art in North Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pieprzak
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
First Century ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
North African ◽  
National Museums ◽  
Private Museums ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Alternative Spaces

In the twenty-first century, works of modern art appear in national museums, private museums, galleries, and independent exhibit spaces across North Africa (defined here as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt). The most significant of these spaces are the Museum of Modern Art Algiers (MAMA) in Algeria (founded in 2007), and the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art in Cairo (founded in 1927). However, in the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the modern art movement in the region, there were very few public museum or gallery spaces for modern art. With the notable exception of Egypt, national museums across the region were for the most part inherited colonial structures. In line with the colonial logic behind their creation, these museums tended to display archaeological finds and local arts that were considered traditional such as pottery, textiles, manuscript illumination, and woodcarving. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the majority of work by North African modernists was displayed abroad or in small galleries, local salons, fine arts academies, or art festivals. North African artists also worked to create alternative spaces for modern art, in street exhibits, art publications, and independent galleries.

scholarly journals Where flesh meets bone: dance in the modern art museum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Joelle McCurdy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Tate Modern ◽  
Definition Of

Dance has recently taken up an increasing presence in major modern art museums as core curatorial programming, occupying galleries throughout exhibition hours. Although time figures prominently in emerging literature addressing this trend, spatial analyses remain fragmentary. Yet, dance is distinctive from other time-based media because of its heightened relationship with space. This raises an important question: how does dance’s newfound presence ‘re-choreograph’ the spaces of modern art museums? Extending the work of Henri Lefebvre, this dissertation adopts an expanded definition of museum space encompassing physical, social and conceptual domains. Dance, an art concerned with the shaping of space, is examined as a transformative force, productively intervening with the galleries, encounters, objects, and historical narratives comprising modern art museum space. In this study, purity and atemporality are identified as the preeminent principles organizing modern art museum space, and dance, an ‘impure’ and process-based art, is theorized as a productive contaminant, catalyzing change. Using this theoretical framework and Using this theoretical framework and evocative descriptions of Boris Charmatz’s 20 Dancers for the XX Century (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18-20 October 2013), dance’s unique collaboration with modern art museum space is analyzed. Socially, dance’s multisensuality pollutes museum goers’ ocularcentric experiences with art. Conceptually, dance diversifies understandings of objects and the androcentric history they uphold. Physically, dance is carving out new spaces, with performance venues being incorporated into the ‘bones’ of high profile institutions. Interspersed between these analytical chapters, evocative descriptions of Spatial Confessions (On the Question of Instituting the Public) by Bojana Cvejić and collaborators (Tate Modern, London, 21-24 May 2014) introduce observations beyond the analytical scope, opening up the liminal spaces of this document to ongoing inquiry. This dissertation contributes a sustained analysis of dance’s spatial impact on modern art museums. By investigating how dance intervenes with the limitations of the white cube, it critiques this supposedly ‘blank’ space, questioning its continued supremacy within these institutions. Moreover, as dance is ushered into performance venues within the museum’s expanding domain, this dissertation interrogates the modern propensity for specialization and master narratives pervading the spaces of these institutions, despite decades of interventional artistic and curatorial practices.

Green synthesis, characterization of silver sulfide nanoparticles and antibacterial activity evaluation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chem Int
Keyword(s):  
Antibacterial Activity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Silver Sulfide ◽  
Morphological Properties ◽  
Effective Diameter ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Green Route ◽  
Silver Sulfide Nanoparticles

This research work presents a facile and green route for synthesis silver sulfide (Ag2SNPs) nanoparticles from silver nitrate (AgNO3) and sodium sulfide nonahydrate (Na2S.9H2O) in the presence of rosemary leaves aqueous extract at ambient temperature (27 oC). Structural and morphological properties of Ag2SNPs nanoparticles were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The surface Plasmon resonance for Ag2SNPs was obtained around 355 nm. Ag2SNPs was spherical in shape with an effective diameter size of 14 nm. Our novel approach represents a promising and effective method to large scale synthesis of eco-friendly antibacterial activity silver sulfide nanoparticles.

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