Museum Melee

Serendipity delivered a little trip down-south last week, and I was able to see a handful of great museums. Just a few photographs with highlights below. (Click to enlarge images)



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Foundation Beyeler_Renzo Piano
There is a sort-of family of art museums that Piano has realized (all using repetitive roof elements, and a series of diffusing layers in order to deliver a blanket of even, diffuse light into the galleries) of which the Beyeler is a good example. Other family members include the High Museum, de Menil, and Nasher.



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Kunsthaus Bregenz_Peter Zumthor
I was lucky enough to see a show with the kind of art that really shines in this powerful building by Zumthor... sculpture and installation work. John Fabre took over the entire building beginning with the bathrooms on the basement floor in a surrealist work that culminates with a figure excavating a human brain(mind) on the top floor of the museum. Zumthor brings daylight into the exhibition spaces via an extra half-floor of space above the ceiling plane that allows light in on all four sides of the room and then down through the milky glass ceiling. Brilliant!



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Kunstmuseum Stuttgart_Hascher and Jehle
This fairly new museum sits right on the busiest pedestrian street in the city center. A modestly sized glass cube sits atop a huge underground complex of galleries that occupy space leftover from abandoned roadway tunnels. Now that's a good idea. Replace cars with art! Link to H&J site here.



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Kolumba_Peter Zumthor
Built into and over the ruins of at least two churches and one working chapel with off-white Danish bricks, the Kolumba Museum also houses the Archdiocese of Cologne's amazing art collection. This project has enough palimpsest to sink a cruise ship designed by Frank Gehry. Or something like that. My point-and-shoot had a hard time with the contrasting light/dark levels in the gallery spaces, so you might want to try a flickr search for better shots of the interior. Really amazing project... ask me about it sometime.




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Museum Insel Hombroich_Erwin Heerwich
A series of pavilions in the landscape. No air conditioning or heat. No gaurds. No art work labels on the walls. No electrical lights. A substanitial art collection with many of the heavy hitters collected by other museums. Doors left open to the landscape. Leaves blown in from wind, left scattered on the floor. Even a few cobwebs here and there. A powerful un-museum. A kind of freedom.
(Use arrows to click through pictures on the Hombroich website here.)