So, to all you kids who got in on the new New Museum's free 30 hour opening... whatcha think?
I thought that there were some interesting moves: The theater was nicely done and felt warmer than the rest of the space (as did the restrooms on the lower level - COLOR!), the small cubbie of an exhibition space that was tucked into the interstitial space between the third and fourth floors (at the landing of the long, seemingly pointless staircase behind the elevators) was very cool (and is likely going to be the home of some freaky-weird exhibits in the future), and the overall material palette (fluorescent lights, steel, metal mesh, etc) was pleasantly set within the context of the building's site.
But I was sadly underwhelmed on the whole.
The spaces didn't really have much of a sense of flow to them (I mean, the exhibit spaces on the second, third, and fourth floors were just flat, open spaces) and felt small for their given purpose. How long is it before they're going to need to expand again? The fifth floor "Museum as Hub" space was incredibly claustrophobic as well... and there weren't even that many people in the space when I was there. I guess I kept comparing it to PS1 (as the exhibits were in the same vein) where there is more drama to the spaces; they have a varying sense of scale, importance, and flow. I didn't get that from the New Museum.
Also, once you were inside, you didn't really get the sensation of being in this beautifully, asymmetrical stack of boxes ready to tip over on to the Bowery. I thought the architects would take more of an advantage in that, cutting in apertures in the floors, ceilings and walls to emphasize the building's drama. These moves only exist in a few places, however. In the galleries, skylights cut into the ceiling where one box extends beyond another, but the ceiling is so intentionally cluttered with fluorescent strip lights, beams, sprinklers, and the underside of the metal decking for the floor above, it doesn't read as strongly as it should.
It certainly wasn't all disappointing, but it definitely felt a little lacking. Oh, and they gave us a bunch of free candy. YUM!
I'm interested to hear what everyone else thought.
My friends and I went today and had a very similar reaction.
Question:
So is the building an extension of the current exhibit? I mean, while monumental, it really isn't. And do you think that the concrete slabs are supposed to be in their current finish condition? I would think most would be appalled....
this is an excerpt from what i wrote elsewhere for a related item. Part of it as regarding to the New Museum as follows.
"people are also highly critical of Museums with large pages on the Cafe section in their web sites and views to other potential real estate developments however few blocks or directly adjacent (me too).
I am finding nomadic trade fairs quite more appropriate instead of permenant museums.
There should not be too many museums in New York City, I am saying.
There are enough donor donated dollar museums already exists with other 9 to 5 urban spaces.
Architecturally, this museum has some uncanny qualities that parallel loft/condominium models going around. ie; Blue and Blue and the like, in terms of scale and line thickness.
They mostly serve hi-artsy income groups loft dwellers who has art walls to decorate, and donor types who get best of everything before it goes to gift shop mail order, something like that."
Although i won't be fortunate enough to experience the space myself....
I think that on the outside as an object the building looks interesting, with the varying stacks...
However,
I thought (as i commented in a news posting) that visually the mesh facade didn't gell on the closeups shots i have seen.
Also, from what i have read the concrete is supposed to have rough finish, as is the general interior design. Although i am not sure if this will remain constant between exhibitions. I think the roughness was purposefully contextual?
Rough materiality can be fantastic in a museum setting (Dia Beacon, anyone?), but I feel that this kind of approach usually works best when contrasted with something refined. I've seen this strategy used frequently in SANAA's work (at least in photographs) and I'm dissappointed that that kind of contrast is a little less orchestrated in this building. I also think that, like with the top floor of the new MOMA building, it's going to take a least a year for the curators to figure out how to deal with the new "white box" museum spaces. I feel that it's a lot easier when, as in the Dia Beacon, the museum is created around a specific collection.
All in all, I'm just glad they had the balls to hire who they did...
i think that as a diagram, the stacked boxes are really interesting, even if a bit overdone. it'll be interesting to see a popular school gimmick brought to fruition.
as an actual functioning gallery, i'm not so sure it seems that great. the pics i've seen have left me less than impressed (and i'm usually floored by SANAA)
i've yet to visit the space, though so i'll stop there and say i've got to get to NYC to see this and a bunch of other new projectos.
The space definitely feels unfinished. There are cracks in the concrete floor that don't seem t be intentional. Also there are markings on some of the walls from construction that haven't been removed. The lack of craftsmanship was mentioned in the New York Times review, but some finishing details just seemed sloppy.
i have been to quite a few sejima buildings in japan. the 21st . building is very very well built, the planning is clever and the whole pacakage quite well done. a masterpiece, really...on other hand many of her older works are equally smart but not so well built and somehow underwhelming as places.
my feeling about japanese architecture is that it is often about making a clear one-liner, which is great for making buildings accessable, but can lead to too much attention paid to refining one idea while sacrificing others...maybe that happened here too...? in pics the whole looks fantastic, really really brilliant, but up close the spaces are not so strong, often appearing like a school in a high crime area...not just rough, but harsh. maybe that was the vibe they were going for, but i wonder why there is not also the opportunity to escape from that...so far even the much favored stairs seem to me rather harsh and uninviting...
however maybe it feels different in person. anyone who went liked it ?
Regarding the harsh/unfinished (etc) sense of space..
My impression is that Sanaa was trying to emulate (?) the old feel of the Bowery and in general trying to replicate the sense of newness/roughness that (at least at point) the New Museum stood for..
Hopefully it still does. It seems as if whatever the flaws, their work/design certainly does this...
Perhaps, it was about not wanting to go down the road the MOMA went down with it's expansion???
I quite liked the spaces. The gallery spaces were well proportioned and easy to circulate and navigate. The spaces between galleries (stairs, elevators, corridors, etc) were interesting and worth investigating (long/narrow stairs vs. massive elevators). My favorite place for viewing art in New York is Dia: Beacon, but one must remember that Beacon is a horizontal space, with a huge, sprawling property to wander, wheras the Bowery is tall with smallish floorplates. Obviously I would rather meander through massive rooms filled with Dan Flavin's fluorescents than hike up and down stairs to be blinded by New Museum's fluorescents, but the building is mad decent (borrowing the phrase). I really like the moments where the detailing is raw - namely the brake-formed, expanded metal mesh ceiling panels and the frameless glass walls of the ground floor gallery with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' piece. I even like the "unresolved" corners of the exterior mesh. It's kind of like a dull blade - sharp, but not precise. Shit, that does not sound as good as I had meant it...
Curatorially, I think the museum suffers. New Museum was a very important institution in the mid-late 1990's, especially in the context of the demise of Alleged Gallery, the commercialization of places like Deitch Projects, the always lame Whitney Biennial, and the MoMA's transformation into an airport. The shows at New Museum post-SoHo have been lackluster for years and they really need to step things up to maintain interest enough to cover the expenses and anticipation of their new building. The inaugural show is hard to judge any way except as a "fuck you" mumbled under ones breath (as opposed to a "fuck you" said clearly and with passion). I actually overheard someone say "this looks like a giant garage sale." At least it's called Unmonumental.
The former bookshop buyer was also quite good, while the new shop is basically a cross between Barnes & Noble and the Strand...all fine and good (sorta), but with the death of Untitled Bookshop, there was much hope for the New Museum shop to fill that void. Sadly it does not, instead offering a combination of pedestrian titles and crazy-expensive magazines (why would you pay $32 for the same publication that you can buy at Dexter Sinister for $16?).
Its been said that one of the reasons , aside from any discernable contextual reasons , for such an industrial/unfinished aesthetic was because the building was designed to accomodate such shody construction detailing standards in the US when compared to that of Japan.
While much of the experience was quite underwhelming, I was quite impressed by the nuances of the museum. The balconies, the exremely claustrophobic space behind the core (which no one seemed to know how to circulate through), the stair to the lower level theater... I was more imrpessed with the museum than the exhibition itself.
yeah, yeah, yeah I know Japanese Architecture this, and the quality of craft that. But it is so booorrrriinnngggg. Denial is name of game here, even with an honest best effor to latch onto and cherish some little nugget of this building in the end it is simple denial. This building is just down-right boring.
they didn't even detail the color tile above the urinals properly, the reveal is only 3" (why not make it 5" to hide the black goop)!
noMSG, I highly doubt that. I knew the team behind the construction and at no point was that brought up. The details here are not difficult and given who built it a near Japanese level of quality was attainable. The reasons were both budget and context.
I think the Village Voice's review is spot on......
"Expect this new building to be on people's lips for some time to come—it's that good. Simply put, SANAA's New Museum design reclaims a significant amount of sanity for American museum architecture. Its interior is largely a no-frills space; its layout is straightforward and user-friendly; the building's use of relatively inexpensive materials is comfortable, accommodating, and—above all—unpretentious. Things in the museum-design world could change after this. Goodbye, vein-free marble and glitch-free modernism; hello, aluminum scrim and cracked concrete floors. The overall effect is that of finally being able to cough after a painful visit to the opera. "
The new New Museum... thoughts?
So, to all you kids who got in on the new New Museum's free 30 hour opening... whatcha think?
I thought that there were some interesting moves: The theater was nicely done and felt warmer than the rest of the space (as did the restrooms on the lower level - COLOR!), the small cubbie of an exhibition space that was tucked into the interstitial space between the third and fourth floors (at the landing of the long, seemingly pointless staircase behind the elevators) was very cool (and is likely going to be the home of some freaky-weird exhibits in the future), and the overall material palette (fluorescent lights, steel, metal mesh, etc) was pleasantly set within the context of the building's site.
But I was sadly underwhelmed on the whole.
The spaces didn't really have much of a sense of flow to them (I mean, the exhibit spaces on the second, third, and fourth floors were just flat, open spaces) and felt small for their given purpose. How long is it before they're going to need to expand again? The fifth floor "Museum as Hub" space was incredibly claustrophobic as well... and there weren't even that many people in the space when I was there. I guess I kept comparing it to PS1 (as the exhibits were in the same vein) where there is more drama to the spaces; they have a varying sense of scale, importance, and flow. I didn't get that from the New Museum.
Also, once you were inside, you didn't really get the sensation of being in this beautifully, asymmetrical stack of boxes ready to tip over on to the Bowery. I thought the architects would take more of an advantage in that, cutting in apertures in the floors, ceilings and walls to emphasize the building's drama. These moves only exist in a few places, however. In the galleries, skylights cut into the ceiling where one box extends beyond another, but the ceiling is so intentionally cluttered with fluorescent strip lights, beams, sprinklers, and the underside of the metal decking for the floor above, it doesn't read as strongly as it should.
It certainly wasn't all disappointing, but it definitely felt a little lacking. Oh, and they gave us a bunch of free candy. YUM!
I'm interested to hear what everyone else thought.
My friends and I went today and had a very similar reaction.
Question:
So is the building an extension of the current exhibit? I mean, while monumental, it really isn't. And do you think that the concrete slabs are supposed to be in their current finish condition? I would think most would be appalled....
Ha, I was wondering that myself regarding the name of the exhibit.
this is an excerpt from what i wrote elsewhere for a related item. Part of it as regarding to the New Museum as follows.
"people are also highly critical of Museums with large pages on the Cafe section in their web sites and views to other potential real estate developments however few blocks or directly adjacent (me too).
I am finding nomadic trade fairs quite more appropriate instead of permenant museums.
There should not be too many museums in New York City, I am saying.
There are enough donor donated dollar museums already exists with other 9 to 5 urban spaces.
Architecturally, this museum has some uncanny qualities that parallel loft/condominium models going around. ie; Blue and Blue and the like, in terms of scale and line thickness.
They mostly serve hi-artsy income groups loft dwellers who has art walls to decorate, and donor types who get best of everything before it goes to gift shop mail order, something like that."
Although i won't be fortunate enough to experience the space myself....
I think that on the outside as an object the building looks interesting, with the varying stacks...
However,
I thought (as i commented in a news posting) that visually the mesh facade didn't gell on the closeups shots i have seen.
Also, from what i have read the concrete is supposed to have rough finish, as is the general interior design. Although i am not sure if this will remain constant between exhibitions. I think the roughness was purposefully contextual?
Rough materiality can be fantastic in a museum setting (Dia Beacon, anyone?), but I feel that this kind of approach usually works best when contrasted with something refined. I've seen this strategy used frequently in SANAA's work (at least in photographs) and I'm dissappointed that that kind of contrast is a little less orchestrated in this building. I also think that, like with the top floor of the new MOMA building, it's going to take a least a year for the curators to figure out how to deal with the new "white box" museum spaces. I feel that it's a lot easier when, as in the Dia Beacon, the museum is created around a specific collection.
All in all, I'm just glad they had the balls to hire who they did...
i think that as a diagram, the stacked boxes are really interesting, even if a bit overdone. it'll be interesting to see a popular school gimmick brought to fruition.
as an actual functioning gallery, i'm not so sure it seems that great. the pics i've seen have left me less than impressed (and i'm usually floored by SANAA)
i've yet to visit the space, though so i'll stop there and say i've got to get to NYC to see this and a bunch of other new projectos.
The space definitely feels unfinished. There are cracks in the concrete floor that don't seem t be intentional. Also there are markings on some of the walls from construction that haven't been removed. The lack of craftsmanship was mentioned in the New York Times review, but some finishing details just seemed sloppy.
The opening show was as "unmonumental" as promised...
i have been to quite a few sejima buildings in japan. the 21st . building is very very well built, the planning is clever and the whole pacakage quite well done. a masterpiece, really...on other hand many of her older works are equally smart but not so well built and somehow underwhelming as places.
my feeling about japanese architecture is that it is often about making a clear one-liner, which is great for making buildings accessable, but can lead to too much attention paid to refining one idea while sacrificing others...maybe that happened here too...? in pics the whole looks fantastic, really really brilliant, but up close the spaces are not so strong, often appearing like a school in a high crime area...not just rough, but harsh. maybe that was the vibe they were going for, but i wonder why there is not also the opportunity to escape from that...so far even the much favored stairs seem to me rather harsh and uninviting...
however maybe it feels different in person. anyone who went liked it ?
Regarding the harsh/unfinished (etc) sense of space..
My impression is that Sanaa was trying to emulate (?) the old feel of the Bowery and in general trying to replicate the sense of newness/roughness that (at least at point) the New Museum stood for..
Hopefully it still does. It seems as if whatever the flaws, their work/design certainly does this...
Perhaps, it was about not wanting to go down the road the MOMA went down with it's expansion???
I quite liked the spaces. The gallery spaces were well proportioned and easy to circulate and navigate. The spaces between galleries (stairs, elevators, corridors, etc) were interesting and worth investigating (long/narrow stairs vs. massive elevators). My favorite place for viewing art in New York is Dia: Beacon, but one must remember that Beacon is a horizontal space, with a huge, sprawling property to wander, wheras the Bowery is tall with smallish floorplates. Obviously I would rather meander through massive rooms filled with Dan Flavin's fluorescents than hike up and down stairs to be blinded by New Museum's fluorescents, but the building is mad decent (borrowing the phrase). I really like the moments where the detailing is raw - namely the brake-formed, expanded metal mesh ceiling panels and the frameless glass walls of the ground floor gallery with Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' piece. I even like the "unresolved" corners of the exterior mesh. It's kind of like a dull blade - sharp, but not precise. Shit, that does not sound as good as I had meant it...
Curatorially, I think the museum suffers. New Museum was a very important institution in the mid-late 1990's, especially in the context of the demise of Alleged Gallery, the commercialization of places like Deitch Projects, the always lame Whitney Biennial, and the MoMA's transformation into an airport. The shows at New Museum post-SoHo have been lackluster for years and they really need to step things up to maintain interest enough to cover the expenses and anticipation of their new building. The inaugural show is hard to judge any way except as a "fuck you" mumbled under ones breath (as opposed to a "fuck you" said clearly and with passion). I actually overheard someone say "this looks like a giant garage sale." At least it's called Unmonumental.
The former bookshop buyer was also quite good, while the new shop is basically a cross between Barnes & Noble and the Strand...all fine and good (sorta), but with the death of Untitled Bookshop, there was much hope for the New Museum shop to fill that void. Sadly it does not, instead offering a combination of pedestrian titles and crazy-expensive magazines (why would you pay $32 for the same publication that you can buy at Dexter Sinister for $16?).
Its been said that one of the reasons , aside from any discernable contextual reasons , for such an industrial/unfinished aesthetic was because the building was designed to accomodate such shody construction detailing standards in the US when compared to that of Japan.
While much of the experience was quite underwhelming, I was quite impressed by the nuances of the museum. The balconies, the exremely claustrophobic space behind the core (which no one seemed to know how to circulate through), the stair to the lower level theater... I was more imrpessed with the museum than the exhibition itself.
i think the title of the exhibit says all that needs to be said: Unmonumental.
ps., did anyone see the pile of change on the one windowsill? i couldn't tell if it was art or not, so i took some of it.
bbbbbboooorrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnngggggggg!
yeah, yeah, yeah I know Japanese Architecture this, and the quality of craft that. But it is so booorrrriinnngggg. Denial is name of game here, even with an honest best effor to latch onto and cherish some little nugget of this building in the end it is simple denial. This building is just down-right boring.
they didn't even detail the color tile above the urinals properly, the reveal is only 3" (why not make it 5" to hide the black goop)!
what were you expecting?
noMSG, I highly doubt that. I knew the team behind the construction and at no point was that brought up. The details here are not difficult and given who built it a near Japanese level of quality was attainable. The reasons were both budget and context.
I think the Village Voice's review is spot on......
"Expect this new building to be on people's lips for some time to come—it's that good. Simply put, SANAA's New Museum design reclaims a significant amount of sanity for American museum architecture. Its interior is largely a no-frills space; its layout is straightforward and user-friendly; the building's use of relatively inexpensive materials is comfortable, accommodating, and—above all—unpretentious. Things in the museum-design world could change after this. Goodbye, vein-free marble and glitch-free modernism; hello, aluminum scrim and cracked concrete floors. The overall effect is that of finally being able to cough after a painful visit to the opera. "
http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0749,viverosfauneacut,78502,13.html
Simple, rugged and anti-destination museum!
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