Art Museums as Architecture

Museums used to be in actual palaces, and if none were available, buildings were constructed to look like palaces. Why palaces? Well, to paraphrase the notorious bank robber, Willie Sutton, that is where the art is, gathered to show the wealth, power, and culture of the owner.

The Louvre is a converted palace. Originally built in 1190 as a fort, in the 14th century Charles V turned it into the royal residence, and so it remained for the French kings until 1682. Accommodations were made to show parts of the Royal collection, and selected artists were allowed to live and have their studios there. Finally, in 1793, it became a museum open to the public. In 1989, wanting to keep up with the times, the French government had the world-renowned architect, I. M. Pei created a new entrance in the center of the courtyard in the form of the now-famed glass pyramid.

Catherine the Great introduced art to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg in 1764 to house 225 paintings she purchased from the Berlin merchant, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The Hermitage was opened to the public in 1852 by Emperor Nicholas I, who added a New Hermitage building specifically to house the collection as a museum.

In this country, we have no kings, but we do have venerable buildings that demonstrate our culture. The oldest museum in the United States dates from 1773 and is in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded by the Charleston Library Society, it was modeled on the British Museum, initially with zoological and anthropological objects, and expanding to works relating to local history.

From the 19th through the mid-20th century, museum buildings were constructed in the neoclassical style recalling Greek and Roman temples. They were to represent authority, respect, and cultural reverence for their contents. A prime example is the Berlin National Gallery, completed in 1830, and it was built on Berlin’s Museum Island. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was designed by the multi-disciplinary artist and visionary, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

In the U.S., business moguls of the Gilded Age bought what they deemed the best art from Europe for their baronial style mansions. In 1882, Henry Clay Frick built Clayton in Pittsburgh, where his family lived until 1905, when they moved to the New York mansion he constructed with the aim of making his art collection public. They did not give Clayton up since Frick’s business and coke and steel empire was registered in Pittsburgh. In 1970, Frick’s daughter, Helen Clay Frick, moved back and opened Clayton as a museum for her personal collection that included early Renaissance Sienese painting and 18th-century French works of art.

All these museum buildings conveyed the importance of art and science, but in a manner intimidating to the general audience. Increasingly in need of public support, institutions no longer look to the past but rather hire the day’s star architects to create original destination buildings that will lure a public curious as to what they hold inside.

Near the end of last year, the Grand Egyptian Museum was opened near the Giza Pyramids. It has been described as the world’s largest archeological complex dedicated to a single civilization. The inauguration of the monumental building brought heads of state leading delegations from 79 countries to pay homage to the greatness of a culture, not in a palace of former rulers, but in a purpose-built statement of grandiose proportions.

In China, they are ready to open a museum reinterpreting traditional Suzhou architecture. It is the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art. It was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, with an international practice whose home office is in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Time marches on, and what the art of the future will look like or the structures in which it, along with earlier collections, will be placed, is still to be seen.