On Museums

I wrote this as a comment in the post below, but what the heck – here it is as its own post, as we await the unveiling of the new Kimbell building:

“That’s certainly an interesting take. One which I cannot agree with.

The Kimbell is bar none the finest piece of architecture in the Cultural District, and one of the best in the entire city. It is without a doubt Louis Kahn’s masterpiece. I am no fan of modernist architecture, but Kahn did something few modern architects have ever been able to do – he turned concrete and travertine into something warm and friendly. The building’s cycloidal vaults perfectly echo the barns of the Will Rogers Memorial Center. And the natural lighting system is still, to this day, innovative and remarkable (it’s one of my favorite things about the building). The process of entering the museum, passing through the lawn past the calming fountains and pools across the fine gravel courtyard and into the hard surface of the entrance (the main entrance, not the back door in the parking lot that most people use) is one of my favorite Fort Worth experiences. The Kimbell is, without a doubt, one of the greatest pieces of architecture in the entire world. What’s even better is that the museum itself is fantastic, with a superb collection of art. Art which is enhanced by hanging in Kahn’s intimate and serene building.

I am a fan of all of our museums, but the Kimbell is the absolute peak in terms of architecture. Second would be Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum, which I consider to be not far behind the Kimbell at all in terms of sheer experience. Behind those two I’d put the Carter and the Cowgirl – the Carter for the subtle Jet Age sensibility of those entrance arches and the Cowgirl because it’s just lovely to look at and I’m a sucker for Art Deco, whether new or old. Time will tell how Legorreta’s new Museum of Science and History will fare – I am not especially fond of the design as seen in the renderings, but I’m waiting to at least see how it comes together during construction.

The thing that ties together the “Big Three” – the Kimbell, Carter, and Modern – is that they’re each a product of modernist design, yes; but unlike nearly every other big modernist project I’ve ever come across, they are not showboating pieces of excess and ego. All three are restrained, subtle, and never forget that a great museum has to be a great *building* first and foremost – none of the nonsense you’d get from a Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Liebskind, or others, whose buildings are often barely functional as museums. The leaders of the Cultural District institutions have shown remarkable taste in selecting architects who aren’t about coming to town just to building something to stroke their egos and make the flavor-of-the-day critics (and we definitely have some of those even here in Fort Worth) fawn and throw themselves at their feet.

Piano’s previous works are hit-or-miss for me – I absolutely hate a lot of his product, but I find things I like as well, such as the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. I had hoped that Piano’s past association with Kahn would lead to him building something that would not compete with the original Kimbell or attempt to interfere with its programming, but the news about wanting to building on the lawn gives me concern. It reeks of pure starchitect ego, disrupting the lawn and attempting to one-up Kahn’s design. It is also remarkably backwards and short-sighted to destroy the greenspace to preserve a parking lot (the other site), an attitude which belongs to the Fort Worth of the latter half of the 20th Century and should have no place in the Fort Worth of the 21st.

I say build the new Kimbell building on the east site, the parking lot. Keep the beloved greenspace and building something on its own block that will stand on its own merit.

Now, about the comment that the only two museums that “strike the real flavor of the city” are the Carter and the Museum of Science and History – I’m not sure I follow. Is it a “cowboy” thing? The Carter hasn’t been about just “western art” for a while now. In fact, my favorite exhibitions at the Carter have been the ones that have been as far distant from the Remingtons as possible. The exhibit this year covering the “Fort Worth Circle,” local modern artists from the ’40s and ’50s, was outstanding and was definitely a genuine Fort Worth experience that had nothing to do with endless paintings of cowboys riding past mesas. Similarly, the exhibition of snapshot photos was just fantastic – completely unlike the Carter Museum that most people picture in their minds, and full of great work (I’d love more exhibits featuring the Carter’s photography collection). The Carter Museum is not the “Amon Carter Museum of Western Art” – it is the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Big difference. The Museum long ago expanded to encompass a wide range of American art, not just Western – and it’s a better museum as a result of that. There’s enough Cowtown in Fort Worth elsewhere.

The new museum under construction is the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. It isn’t expressly a children’s museum – while it trended that direction in recent years, it’s my understanding that the new museum will try to feature more than just kid’s stuff. It would be to the FWMSH’s benefit to steer away from being just a “children’s museum” and try to be a more balanced and serious museum of, well, science and history – particularly local history. Lately, it was always the museum I tended to skip during passages through the Cultural District – it’s a bit of a letdown, going from the Modern, Kimbell, and Carter’s collections to walking into the FWMSH and being greeted with what seemed like three dozen exhibits all named something like “KidSpace DinoDig Extreme Star Wars Robot Parade.””