What Should a Museum Be?

After doing this week’s reading assignments, I found myself pondering Lange’s question “What should a museum be?” It’s obvious from the readings that there is no one right answer to this, and why should there be? Museums serve a variety of purposes: from recreational facilities to educational resources, from showcasing national pride to becoming a tourist attraction. There can’t be one prescribed answer. Today, museums aren’t just about the art they house, as they were originally intended to be. Today, the building has as much to say as the art. One must not only experience the artwork in the building, but also experience the building itself. The architecture of the museum has now also become “art”.

But art and architecture have always been intertwined. As we have seen in the past, often times what is current in the art world influences architects and their architecture. So, is it surprising to see that reflected in the architecture of a museum, where the building itself becomes something to admire, to experience? Helen Rees Leahy uses the term “embodied experience” which I find befitting to describe the desired outcome from the phenomenological design of many of these new museums and art instillations. One experiences it mind, body, and soul. I have never been to the Jewish Museum by Daniel Libeskind, but I can only imagine the feeling one gets when initially descending the stairs from the Kollegienhaus into the underground floor of Libeskind’s building. It must stir up an array of emotions, from fear to excitement to horror. The emotion, the embodied experience, makes the visit memorable and the museum unforgettable. This can serve as another definition for “memory museum” where it isn’t just about remembering the atrocities of the past but remembering how being in the actual physical building felt, thereby creating a memory.

Economically this makes sense. In a world filled with museums vying for our attention and our currency, it is important to stand out in the crowd. The embodied experience can help do that. But what better way to start then to invite a renowned architect to design your building? In the case of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Gehry didn’t just design a building; he helped to recreate the city with his museum. Once completed, the museum became an instant tourist attraction, helping Bilbao’s economic transformation. This isn’t very different from what the Burj Khalifa does for Dubai. Both structures are iconic in nature and both help to communicate their respective city’s ambition to transform itself.
              Getting back to the question of what a museum should be, I would say it should be whatever purpose it is trying to fulfill. In the case of the Bilbao Guggenheim or the Tate Modern, their modern, contemporary architecture fits with the modern, contemporary art they house. Robert Venturi’s design of the Salisbury Wing honors the Italian Renaissance, its art and architecture.The building isn't iconic like Gehry's or conjure up an embodied experience. But that doesn't make it any less of a museum. Just like there isn’t one right way to do art or to experience it, there cannot be one prescribed method to what a museum should be.