The connection between a museum, the art it houses, and its context, both site and socially, is something that has resonated in my mind after this weeks readings. Jones’ The Public Discourse of Architecture: Socializing Identities” and Leahy’s Watch Your Step Embodiment and encounter at Tate Modern, had a significant impact on my perspective of museum architecture. In Leahy’s article, she discusses Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and its impacts on society, culture, and museum ethics. Turbine Hall is a transition space, connecting the public to the museums “traditional” art exhibits. It is also used as a large installation exhibition hall. The space is described as being architecturally unique, sublime, and elegant, but it is the art installations showcased in the exhibit hall that make a social and emotional impact.
I found a strong connecting theme between Salcedo’s “Shibboleth” described in Leahy’s article and Liebskind’s Extension to the Jewish Museum, discussed in Jones chapter. The representative goals of art and architecture are interchangeable. There is meaning behind our work. There is context within our designs. There is intent, obvious or not, in our artwork and the decisions we make. However, the challenge is finding a way to express these meanings without words, description, or guidance.
From Jones: Quoting Filler, “[n]one of Libeskind’s allegorical references are readily apparent to the average viewer without prior knowledge of the architect’s intentions.”And again later, “While the architect has suggested that the Jewish Museum ‘speaks a visible language’(quoted in Spens 1999: 42), this complex architectural ‘language’ of form - and experience - is in need of the architect’s own translations, which are often necessary to situate this building in relation to a particular social discourse of memory, loss, or trauma.”
From Leahy on Salcedo’s “Shibboleth”: “despite efforts of both the artist and the institution to fix the meaning of ‘Shibboleth’… the official account of its ‘meaning’ was evidently at odds with how it is perceived and performed by many of it its many visitors.” and later in the article, “… those roaming up and down the Turbine Hall… seemed to be making their own meaning, rather than following an itinerary mapped out by the artist.”’
In both instances, through different medias, a cultural and social intention was attached, but for whatever reason, the intensions were lost. The symbolic meanings became hidden without the support of written and verbal description. This implies that we, as designers and artists, must find a way to portray meaning and symbolism that can be easily recognized.
After reading Lange’s What Should A museum Be? In comparison to the other readings, I started to wonder, what exactly makes a museum a museum?
The Oxford Dictionary defines a museum as “a building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited.”
Take for instance the City of Salem, a historical community, best known for their role in the Witch Trials, that has exploded into a cultural tourist destination. The city is filled with historical roads, houses, public buildings, cemeteries, and monuments that are on display for visitors to see, and believe me, people flock year round to see all of these attractions. Can Salem be considered a Museum? It is not a physical building, however, it is a place that houses history, art, science, and culture that guests from around the world travel to see.
This thought, along with the article Art/Architecture; A 21st-Century Museum with Puritan Bones, reminded me of growing up in Downtown Salem. I am almost ashamed to admit that until recent years, I never viewed the Peabody Essex Museum as a museum. Not in the context that it wasn’t actually a museum, but that it was part of my personal social culture. The PEM was always there. I have visited the museum more times than I can count, and I utilized the building as more than just a museum. Growing up 2 blocks east of the museum, the PEM was my “freedom limit”. For years, I was not allowed to go farther than the PEM without parental supervision, and this resulted in spending most of my summer weekends sprawled on the steps of the museum people watching with friends. The chinese house incorporated into the museum, also a normality, and to me, was just another building I passed on my way to Sunday morning breakfast with my dad. Mr. Saftie said about the chinese house, “You stumble upon it and ask: was it always here? Was there some Chinese prince resident in Salem?” To me, yes, it has always been there; Charter Street would look incomplete were it not there.
Is this a normal perspective? I wonder if people in other areas of the world feel the same about their local museum. I found myself pondering the idea that maybe the citizens of Bilbao are marveling the PEM as they have become blind to their own museum, just as the PEM has blended in as just another part of my world.
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