Happy October! Here’s the jobs roundup for the week of October 1st: Northeast Native History Educators and other positions [Plimoth Plantation- Plymouth, MA] Assistant Museum Preparator [Currier Museum of Art- Manchester, NH] Director of Collections and Exhibitions [The Olana Partnership- Hudson, NY] Visitor Services Manager …
Humans have always been interested in unusual, curious, and odd things. For this reason unusual collections, both personal and in museums, exist throughout the world. This interest in collecting the unusual and interesting can be traced back to the cabinets of curiosity popular in 16th …
Spiraling ramp ways, dizzying spatial effects, metal beams that emulate a flapping wingspan, and multimillion-dollar converted industrial buildings: these are just some of the many characteristics we find in the recent cultural phenomenon known as the “spectacularization” of museums. From Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, art museums have quickly become places not just containing great art, but works of art in themselves. Yet again, another museum architectural wonder is set to open next week- the Glenstone Museum, in Potomac, Maryland. With a hefty renovation price tag of $200 million, the new museum design features a network of glass-enclosed passageways surrounding an 18,000 square foot water court. Although aesthetically intriguing, does this flamboyant architecture detriment the art viewing experience?
From the mid-twentieth century onward, in part as a result of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, there has been a shift from the Neoclassical-type museum design to more open, airy, and dynamic building projects. This approach is global; from I.M Pei’s construction of the glass pyramids at the Musée du Louvre, to Thomas Heatherwick’s conversion of a grains silo into the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, there has been an increased use of “blockbuster” museum building types. Not only do these facilities boost attendance, revenue, and local economies, they also act as a catalyst for greater interest in art.
In 2016, for instance, SFMOMA received a $305 million-dollar facelift from Snøhetta, a Norwegian design and branding firm. Two floors of the seven-story building are now free and accessible to the public. With daily free public tours, the space encourages anyone to visit and learn. The multitude of seating arrangements in these spaces also invites visitors to sit down, relax, and digest the art surrounding them. Similarly, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles – another renovated contemporary art museum – offers free tours that facilitate engaging conversation about both the art and architecture that are available to the public on a weekly basis.
According to the Glenstone Museum’s website, “architecture is as essential as artwork and landscape, providing a minimal design to complement the collection and visitor experience.” Because so many museums that undergo these extreme updates ensure that their changes will positively serve the local population, instead of only capitalizing on tourists, I find that overall dramatic architecture types are inherently good, and that visitors are just as eager to discover the art inside as they are to experience the architecture itself. Similarly, the couple who is responsible for funding Glenstone has recently shared that one of the reasons why they decided to expand was to bring in more local school groups, “where arts education is at risk.” While it may be true that some visitors are more interested in the architecture than the art that lies within, I argue that these waves of dramatic architecture construction and conversion actually promote serious inquiry, encourage critique, and invite conversation.
We’ve all heard the dire news. We’ve seen the straw drawn out of the turtle’s nose. We carry our reusable bags, whether or not our town has outlawed them. We know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In ways large and small, the people of …
This week, tragedy struck the museum community and humankind with the burning of the Museo Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 200 hundred year old museum, housed in the what was once the royal palace, has lost more than 90% of it’s 20 million …
In September of last year, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) – the largest museum of contemporary African art in the world – opened its doors on the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa. Hailed as “a new beacon of art” and “Africa’s most important museum opening in a century,” MOCAA promised its visitors an accessible and engaging space in which to enjoy one hundred galleries of installations, photography, paintings, and video works on view. Although its collection represents an impressive breadth of global art, and the artists represented are queer, female, and international, MOCAA received criticism for its lack of diversity among its high-ranking staff (most of whom are white and male). Considering the Museum will be celebrating its one-year anniversary this month, how has it addressed this problem…if at all?
At MOCAA, boutique lighting, white walls, and spaced out exhibitions provide an aesthetic experience that facilitate art viewing, encouraging visitors to stay for hours and to become lost in the great art before them. From Yinka Shonibare’s film installations that reflect on colonial practices, to sculptures by Swazi artist Nandipha Mntambo that explore the notion of binaries, MOCAA poignantly displays art from critically acclaimed artists. The collection, in addition to being beautiful, is worldly, intellectual, and relevant to today’s ever-changing political climate.
As a result of this universal approach, the canon of African art history is slowly widening and shifting to a more inclusive perspective. Despite these positives, the “overarching amount of white male voices” among its staff and Board of Directors becomes problematic when we consider the fact that only twenty-six years ago black South Africans were not even allowed to enter museums. Apartheid, the discriminatory racial classification system that severely restricted black South Africans’ rights to own land, vote, or visit certain areas, existed throughout the country from 1948-1991. Although apartheid has been abolished, its effects of systemic racism divisions still linger.
In May, MOCAA faced even more criticism when Mark Coetzee, executive director and chief curator (and personal friend of museum founder Jochen Zeitz), resigned due to professional misconduct allegations. Azu Nwagbogu, MOCAA’s photography curator, replaced him as the new director and head curator. Nwagbogu is also the editor-in-chief of Art Base Africa, an online contemporary African art journal, and has been the director of the African Artists’ Foundation since 2007. With these outstanding qualifications, it makes me wonder why he wasn’t hired as chief curator in the first place. In this role, Nwagbogu will also oversee the Museum’s curating training program, which trains twenty aspiring curators from around the continent “to work specifically in the context of their communities.”
I think there is hope for change with its youth curating program. After all, the Museum is still in its infancy; at the time of this writing it has only been open to the public for one year. With the criticisms it has received regarding its “whiteness” in a country that has experienced ongoing intense racial divides, I hope that in the coming year, and under the new direction of Nwagbogu, MOCAA will mindfully make decisions to prioritize inclusion and diversity among its staff, Board, and program efforts.