A Museum Open to the Street

Katarzyna Jagodzińska

Peer review and editing organized by:

Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury, Kraków / International Cultural Centre, Krakow

Reviewers:

Monika Rydiger, Michał Wiśniewski

Wersja polska dostępna pod / Polish version available at:

(RIHA Journal 0024)

Abstract

Glazed exhibition rooms, enabling passers-by to see works of art from the level and perspective of the street, without going inside. Merchandise displayed in an art bookshop, also visible from the outside, tempting passers-by. Café tables spilling out into the space of the adjacent town square. Sculptures, installations, but also benches and fountains placed in the public space, creating an entrance space. These are the characteristic components of democratic art institutions. Museums, galleries and centres of art – of contemporary art in particular – go out into the space of the street to encourage passers-by to step inside. This mutual permeation and observation of the two worlds – the outdoor world of the street and the interior holding cultural treasures – has become part of the cognition process in the museum and of artistic sensations.

1. Over the two and a half centuries of the history of public museums, the museum building has undergone only one revolutionary change. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and also in the first half of the 20^th, the museum building was based on the classical canon of a temple. A monumental edifice with a columned portico, colonnades, a large staircase, a central rotunda and long galleries was erected with a view to the safekeeping of treasures of culture, art and nature. Its architecture and spatial layout thus underscored the shrine-like character of the institution. Museum buildings with such characteristics are scattered all over Europe, from London's National Gallery (1838), British Museum (1852) (fig. 1) and Tate Britain (1897), to the Altes Museum in Berlin (1830) (fig. 2) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (1891) and the Naturhistorisches Museum (1889) in Vienna, and also on other continents where European influence was strong, e.g. the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1874) and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1937) or the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (1909) (fig. 3).

2. In the 20^th century, the rise of modern art and ever faster progression of artistic styles, where each new one challenged both the previous one and the whole artistic tradition, was paralleled by a metamorphosis of the museum building. A symptomatic manifestation of the change in thinking about such facilities is the Guggenheim Museum in New York.¹ The sculptural silhouette of an inverted pyramid, the spiral ramp with artworks instead of a suite of rooms, and the consistently descending vantage point as the viewer moved on, triggered a revolution that could not be stopped. After the opening of the museum in this building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1959, unconventional museum facilities were created for contemporary art with growing frequency, at places more and more distant from the major centres of culture, and architects made sure that their designs were increasingly elaborate and inventive.

1 British Museum in London (photograph provided by the author)

2 Altes Museum in Berlin (photograph provided by the author)

3 Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (photograph provided by the author)

3. The architectural shell is an expression of the change in thinking about the museum institution – not so much about its role as a depository of cultural treasures (in this case: works of art, specifically works of contemporary art, which I refer to in this article), but about its social significance, and the role it is to play in the urban space, in society's awareness and in education, both locally and globally. The turnaround observed since the latter half of the 20^th century in the museum industry, and also in other types of institutions involved in accumulation or merely display of contemporary art (galleries, art centres, Kunsthallen), consists in questioning (or at least casting doubt on or attempting a dialogue with) the idea of the museum as a "cathedral of art" and transition to the democratic museum. This primarily pertains to the programme of the institution, but in a number of cases extends to the appearance of the building itself.²

4. A museum building is not necessarily an enclosed fortress, walled off from the outer world, keeping works of art safe inside. It can be wholly or partly transparent, reveal its interior to those who remain outside, but it can also offer those inside an opportunity to look at the outer world – a panoramic vista of the city or the bustle of the street. This mutual permeation and observation of the two worlds has become part of the cognition process in the museum and of artistic sensations. Democratic art institutions may not only reveal a part of their interior, but also physically leave that interior in an act of annexation of the adjacent streets, squares or gardens by deploying outdoor arrangements of café tables, sculptures, installations, and also benches and fountains placed in the public space, creating its own entrance space. Institutions of art, in particular of contemporary art, go out into the space of the street to encourage passers-by to step inside, but also to enhance the range of possible ways and opportunities to participate in culture. The object of this article is to seek an answer to the question about the relationship between the museum and the street (and the space around the museum in general) by looking at examples of museums in Western and Central Europe and in America.

5. As the starting point for considerations of the physical transparency of the walls of a museum building and its (also physical) opening onto its surroundings, let us use the design of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (fig. 4, 5), which has unleashed the greatest debate on a museum topic in the history of Polish culture. The history of the architectural competition, the creation of the institution and the work on the design – going back to 2005 – includes some elements of sensation (scandals, accusations) and is indicative of the significance of the museum institution in the heart of Poland's capital and the social need for it. The temperature, momentum and scale of this debate (conducted not only in the specialist press but also in the mass media) revolves around several issues: the symbolism of the museum's location (Plac Defilad, the parade grounds in the direct vicinity of the Palace of Culture and Science), the need for iconic architecture, the position of Polish museum architecture in world architecture, and the relation between the building and its surroundings.

4 Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, design (© Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw)

6. The rules of the architectural competition for the museum in Warsaw declared: "The Museum, combined with the adjacent square and park, are going to form one of the most important public places in the centre of Warsaw, currently undergoing revitalization. (...) To the north, the Museum will be functionally connected to the park that is part of an extensive scheme around the Palace of Culture and Science. The relations with the new urban square and park will determine the Museum's openness to the space of the City."³ One of the competition requirements was that the ground floor of the building (described as a "public meetings zone") was to include a café and a restaurant with seasonal outdoor sections and some room for activities in the "public space of the city" (community art project), accessible from outside the building only, while what was called the exhibition space, amounting to some 10,000 m², should contain – in addition to display rooms – "rest zones, observation decks strewn all over the Museum, external and internal views."⁴

5 Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, design, view of the ground floor (© Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw)

7. On the one hand, as we can read in the rules: "Architecturally, the Museum building should offer a counterpoint to the Palace of Culture in terms of form and meaning, and the shape of its solid ought to become a new symbol of Warsaw, recognizable all over the world,"⁵ and on the other, it should be open to the space around it, the city and the people. The announcement of the competition results stirred a storm in the circles of art historians, museum workers, and architects, and also in the public opinion, as the winning entry, designed by the Swiss architect Christian Kerez, was to many a contradiction of their expectations: of sculptural, exuberant, fairytale-like architecture, iconic in every respect. The design of the building was decried as catering to the elite tastes only, and thus ignoring the requirement of a democratic museum. Another object of attack was the glazed ground-floor space, largely intended as retail space for shops and services,⁶ showing some affinity to the department stores on the other side of the street.

8. Ultimately, amid outcries of objection, the design selected in the competition was approved for construction; however, given the changing requirements and expectations, it has been considerably changed twice since.⁷ The description of its final form indicates that "the glazed ground floor, affording wide accessibility of the building from the outside, and the series of windows on the upper floor will ensure changing and varied views of the city."⁸ Furthermore, "art will be visible and accessible directly from the street level in the spacious gallery on the ground floor of the building, located on the side facing ul. Marszalkowska. The exhibition space on the ground floor will be used for temporary displays, targeting the widest possible audiences."⁹ The museum's various functions will also physically flow out into the space surrounding the building, e.g. a restaurant open onto Plac Defilad.

9. The assumption underlying the Warsaw MoMA project was that the accessibility of the newest art and openness in terms of programme entailed literal opening of the building onto the space of the city. On the one hand, this means annexation of space around the facility for its auxiliary functions, and on the other – through the glazing of the ground-floor level – it ensures transparency between the museum zone and the public zone of the city, and their mutual permeation. Using a glass pane rather than entirely separating the two zones, and thus providing passers-by with an insight into the life of the institution itself and into the exhibition rooms, is not an entirely new idea.

10. Reduction of the distance between the guest and the art contained within the confines of a museum was the objective of the ploy used in the gallery called Temporary Contemporary in Los Angeles:¹⁰ when adapting a former warehouse and garage for exhibition purposes in 1983, Frank Gehry decided against any entrance foyer and brought viewers directly into the exhibition room. The idea was to mitigate the intimidation that a museum building sometimes caused in individuals who seldom visited this type of institution.¹¹ A perfect example of the physical accessibility of a cultural institution is the Centre Pompidou in Paris (designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, opened in 1977), which, in addition to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, houses a library, an industrial design centre and a music centre. One of the important architectural features of the fully-glazed structure is its accessibility from all sides, which makes it possible to walk through the building without having to get involved with any of its cultural content. The architects did not specify the main entry either. Unfortunately, the north and south entrances were blocked a few years after the opening,¹² which limited the free circulation of pedestrians. To enlarge the field of its activity, the museum turned the square on which it had been built into its own entrance space; the external markings of this "annexation" were the sculptural elements placed along the square, as a reference to the high-tech structural design of the building. The square became an arena for cultural activities.

11. The first spectacular institution to reveal all of its exhibition space to viewers was the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (by Mies van der Rohe), opened in 1968 (fig. 6). The ground level of the fully-detached gallery building based on a square plan is entirely glazed (the simple roof is supported by eight outer pillars in the façades). The idea of disclosing the interior to passers-by underlies the activity of numerous galleries: well-known Central European examples include the Dorottya Gallery in Budapest (fig. 7)or the Galeria Kordegarda at Krakowskie Przedmiescie in Warsaw.¹³ Their structural designs are suggestive of a shop window – one of the longer walls is fully glazed, which reveals the whole space of the gallery and thus all the works on display inside. This ploy has also been used in the spatial arrangement of the Znaki Czasu ("Signs of the Time") Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń (Edward Lach, 2008), where the ground-floor exhibition room is entirely glazed and the works on display are visible both from the street and from the lobby (fig. 8, 9). The idea of a "shop window with art" was the reference point for the curator of the exhibition prepared by KW – Berlin's Institute for Contemporary Art and shown in 2010 in the temporary building of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The aim of that exhibition, entitled simply Wystawa (Polish for "exhibition", but also for "shop window display") was to restore the original function to shop windows. The works of the invited artists were shown in the windows of the museum – they could be viewed around the clock, just like shop windows, but only through a pane of glass (for the duration of the exhibition, the museum was closed to visitors). At least partial glazing of display rooms does not necessarily have to involve the context of the street. In 1994, Munich's Lenbachhaus museum enlarged its exhibition space by adding the Kunstbau gallery, located underground, in the spare space originally created for the purposes of the metro (fig. 10). The entrance to its display room is situated in an underpass leading to the U-Bahn station, and the panes of glass along both sides of the elongated gallery afford commuters using the escalators an insight into the exhibition.

6 Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (photograph provided by the author)

7 Dorottya Gallery in Budapest (photograph provided by the author)

8 Znaki Czasu ('Signs of the Time') Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun (photograph provided by the author)

9 Znaki Czasu ('Signs of the Time') Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, view of the adjacent square seen from the exhibition room (photograph provided by the author)

10 Kunstbau in Munich (photograph provided by the author)

12. Not all institutions use the existing opportunities to make this type of contact with the passer-by/viewer despite the fact that, in some cases, the structural qualities of their buildings are more than conducive to it. The Wannieck Gallery (Antonín Novák, 2006), located in the adapted building of the 19^th-century Vaňkovka factory in Brno, used its interior arrangement to turn its back on the inner street of the factory complex that divided it from a shopping centre (fig. 11, 12). As in the case of Temporary Contemporary, the entrance takes you directly into the exhibition room, except that here the row of windows filling the long façade of the brick building has been screened with a division wall, with paintings hung only on the side facing the interior. Consequently, the exhibition space is not visible from the outside.

11 Wannieck Gallery in Brno (photograph provided by the author)

12 Wannieck Gallery in Brno, view of the interior (photograph provided by the author)

13. A glass wall builds the relationship between a museum and its surroundings, but "see-through" spots on various storeys (rather than on the ground floor only) also enable the visitors who are inside to have contact with the outside world. In this way, they not only can identify their location in relation to the urban topography, but also control the time of the day or the weather, and last but not least, avail themselves of the observation-deck function. Tate Modern in London (Herzog & de Meuron, 2000) is often referred to as "a building of vistas" in the literature of the subject.¹⁴ The restaurant on the top floor of the museum building adapted from a former power plant is a "must see" observation point, offering a panoramic view of London (fig. 13).¹⁵ Set along the window pane is a long table, which literally tempts you to look at the vistas. A similar effect is exerted by decks located on lower storeys and windows piercing the exhibition rooms. A spectacular observation deck can be found at the Kunsthaus Graz (Peter Cook and Colin Fournier) – a biomorphic exhibition facility built on the occasion of the city becoming the 2003 European Capital of Culture (fig. 14, 15). "Attached" to the outer structure is an elongated glazed observation platform, intended as a place for relaxation after a tour of the exhibitions, but also offering a vista toward the old town and the castle hill. These are the most obvious examples, in which "looking at" and "looking from" have become integral parts of the architectural design, but actually a large number of art institutions today have observation decks and windows for visitors, as exemplified by one of the youngest contemporary art museums – the Brandhorst Museum (by Sauerbruch Hutton) opened in 2009 in Munich (fig. 16), or the older Leopold Museum in Vienna (Ortner & Ortner, 2001).

13 Tate Modern in London, view from the café (photograph provided by the author)

14 Kunsthaus Graz (photograph provided by the author)

15 Kunsthaus Graz, view of the old town seen from the observation deck (photograph provided by the author)

16 Museum Brandhorst in Munich, view of the glazed ground floor (photograph provided by the author)

14. The simplest ploy (requiring no structural modification) to overcome the barrier between the interior and the exterior of an institution seems to be to place certain objects outside the building: café tables, benches, sculptures or installations, and in this way to build an external entrance space around the door. A most elaborate strategy for full utilization of public space is represented by the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna (fig. 17, 21) – a conglomerate of ten cultural institutions, including two art museums and a Kunsthalle. The institutions are located on the site of the 18^th-century imperial stables; two large museums were built from scratch in the courtyard of a historic complex (MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and Leopold Museum). The courtyard has an organizational function for all the cultural institutions around it. It has been redefined as a recreation ground, with a fountain and benches, and a venue for events, such as fashion, design or dance shows, a literary festival, DJs' performances, programmes for children, etc. It is one of the favourite meeting places for the people of Vienna. The benches themselves are works of art (designed by PPAG Architects: Anna Sopelka and Georg Poduschka), and have become one of the most recognizable features of this part of the city. Their colour is changed every year, which causes the space of the courtyard to be redefined on an ongoing basis.¹⁶

17 Leopold Museum in Vienna (photograph provided by the author)

15. Views (as is the case in London), but also objects placed around the museum building and consistently-developed dialogue with the local community are the foundations of the activity of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (Steven Holl, 1998) (fig. 18). The very name of the museum defines its character: chiasma is Greek for "crossing point". Referred to as the "salon" or "meeting place" of the city's residents, the museum continues in its effort to be part of the people's everyday life rather than a place they visit once or twice in their lifetime.¹⁷ This is aided by its location – as significant and pivotal as that of the museum in Warsaw – in the near vicinity of the railway station and the main square of Finland's capital, complete with the parliament building. The ground floor of the museum is known as "the free zone", where – in the words of its director, Tuula Arkio – "in this 'free zone' where you don't have to pay any entrance fee, we have a café, a shop, a reading corner and a room mostly used by school children, with information technology which is free to use. We have a theatre and a place called 'rear window', where we show small exhibitions based on suggestions we get from outside from children, different social groups, photographers, campaign organisers against AIDS or drugs and so on. It's like a 'Speakers' Corner' wall and it has worked very well. On the ground floor we have almost forty per cent more visitors than the official records show. Kiasma has become a real crossing point."¹⁸ In summertime, café tables are put out onto the square surrounding the museum, and sculptures just outside the entrance, in addition to bicycle stands; a skateboarding ramp is also set up on the lawn along the glazed façade. The building is made up of two interwoven structures: a longer one, pronouncedly curved and encompassing the lower one, which is rectangular. The two shorter façades are almost entirely filled with windows, and the western, perpendicular wall is also glazed. Looking at the streets from the exhibition rooms – through the windows and from the observation deck – is an inseparable feature of a visit to the Helsinki museum.

18 Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, skateboarding ramp (photograph provided by the author)

16. The idea of a museum from which to look at the surroundings and which is to be looked at, combined with annexation of the space around it for its own purposes, is embodied by the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum outside Bratislava (Peter Žalman, 2000) (fig. 19, 20). This is a case of a museum situated in the peripheries, far away from big-city hustle and bustle, which is therefore building a relationship with nature rather than with a street. Created on an artificial peninsula on the Danube, the building, whose shape references that of a Roman galley, is surrounded by a sculpture garden (not a public space, but a fenced museum zone, accessible only with a ticket). A café spills out into the space of the garden, which also merges with the exhibition rooms in mutual permeation: the sculptures can be viewed from the glazed parts of the ground floor (and those strolling in the garden can take a look at the works displayed inside the museum) while the observation deck on the upper floor offers a picturesque panorama of the river.

19 Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum near Bratislava (photograph provided by the author)

20 Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum near Bratislava, view of the interior with windows overlooking a panoramic vista of the Danube (photograph provided by the author)

17. Some museum buildings seem to turn their back on the street deliberately. Their interiors are not visible from the outside, and people who are inside remain in a closed world of art, separated from the real one. The MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Ortner & Ortner, 2001) is such a fortress-like building, marked by its extremely narrow windows (fig. 21). The Wroclaw Contemporary Museum is about to become one too. Yet another one is the Kunsthaus Bregenz – Peter Zumthor's architectural tour de force, whose façades are made up of translucent sections of satinated glass through which only vague shapes can be seen. There is also a category of buildings that incorporate the space of the street and engage in a dialogue with it. You can look inside from the street and out into the street from inside. Whether sculptural, biomorphic or designed to amaze, the architecture catches the eye of the passers-by outside (the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (fig. 22) is visible from a number of perspectives near the river, and also from the new town, spreading over an elevated area; the best view of the Kunsthaus Graz is offered by the castle hill, from which the institution's building seems to be hovering like a cloud among the brickwork tops of historic townhouses); the museum as such can also offer a whole range of different vistas of the city (Tate Modern in London). The museum goes out into the street, but also the street enters the museum. The Centre Pompidou was designed as a space at the crossing point of the axes of the square that was to be its site. Overhanging the busy Trasa Lazienkowska thoroughfare in Warsaw, the Polish History Museum (designed by Bohdan Paczowski) is proposed as an extension of the street. Its shape resembles an elongated box – not very tall, glazed at several places – whose intended functions, in addition to those typical of a museum, include a central walkway enabling pedestrians to get across the building without having to either walk around it or get inside to see the exhibits. It is to be a forum accessible to everyone, also outside the museum's open hours.¹⁹

18. Building a relationship with the surroundings – a street, a square, a garden or park – helps the institution to operate as a democratic museum. But, at least in theory, such an open dialogue also entails certain perils. A question arises whether revealing too much through a window pane will not translate into lower numbers of visitors. Revealing just a portion of what is on offer, like a film trailer, will intrigue and encourage people to come in, but will revealing everything not make the passers-by think that there is no longer any reason to step inside? And then, won't an artistic café, bookshop, or outdoor benches with sculptures and fountains create an impression in some of the regular visitors that they still continue to partake of the museum's cultural life even though they remain outside the exhibition rooms at all times?

21 MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (photograph provided by the author)

22 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (photograph provided by the author)

19. These and similar questions appear to be an immanent part of the ongoing development of museums of (not only contemporary) art, which are attaching increasing weight to educational activities and broadly defined entertainment. Some time ago, when writing about museums operating in cultural districts, e.g. the MQ in Vienna, I observed that "cultural districts are a kind of multiplexes targeting audiences of varied needs. To use extreme language, they could be described as Disneylands of culture, with a number of attractions awaiting the visitor in individualized buildings and separate designated spaces. The principal idea is that of entertainment: ranging from ludic to sophisticated forms."²⁰ It was a reference to the type of museum identified by Diane Ghirardo in her book Architecture after Modernism – a museum perceived as a cultural shopping mall.²¹ The issue of a museum open to the street does not call for taking such an extreme stand, but museum buildings that are attractive in architectural terms and those that offer interesting auxiliary functions (which are often of no relevance to museum functions per se) encourage passers-by, tourists and also participants of culture to pause and look through the window pane, take a seat on a bench or at a café table, or ascend to the observation deck (the one in the Kunsthaus Graz is in the tickets-only zone, but at Tate Modern you can move around the permanent exhibition galleries for free, with access to the decks; similarly, a panoramic vista of the city can be enjoyed from the internal circulation routes and observation decks at the Centre Pompidou). It is certainly worthwhile to ask questions about the significance and social use of such museums, to conduct research projects based on statistical and other surveys, but we definitely should not give them up – there is always a chance that someone who would not otherwise be interested in an exhibition or collection will come inside out of sheer curiosity. And possibly, in the future, such a person will be more inclined to go beyond mere "outdoor consumption".

Translated by Jerzy Juruś

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How to cite this article:
Katarzyna Jagodzińska, "A Museum Open to the Street," in: RIHA Journal 0024 (29 June 2011), URN + URL: (date of access: [please add]).