Modern architecture maintains a battle between whether form or function carries the greater value in architectural design. That argument has been specifically notable in the context of the contemporary museum. The contemporary art museum has to consider growing challenges that are altogether separate from the historical art museum. These challenges include the sheer scale of the art, defining the bounds of what contemporary art is, as well as how to deter the growing privatization of museums. This tension in the development of the contemporary art museum has driven the development of “museum as icon”— in which grand architectural forms are used as a marketing ploy to create dramatic city centers of artistic discourse  (Foster 2015). On one hand, the presentation of innovative architecture as a mode to incite museum visitors pushes forward the message of contemporary museum’s vision for innovation and spectacle; on the other hand, this pursuit of innovative form has provided growing functional challenges within the museum institution.

The function of the contemporary museum is in promoting the artists of the immediate now; these museums allow interaction with art as artistic movements develop and have yet to be historically dissected. The contemporary art museum creates opportunity to communicate the cultural breadth of their local community in which they reside, inspire national pride, and especially give acknowledgement to the next wave of artistic geniuses while they remain living. The insistence on grand, innovative architecture to use an architectural icon as the shell of the contemporary art institution distracts from the art itself. People who report going to these “museum icons” speak exclusively of the architecture and not the exhibits. In the case of the contemporary art wing of the Denver Art Museum, the interior structure is so dramatic that art has to be hung on slanted walls and sculptures are forced to sit in a labyrinth of wall formations where they can easily be missed. Architecture has gone a bit too far in their pursuit of form over function.

Continually, these architectural icons have shifted the audience of the museum and has forced entry fees to increase exponentially. The museum is no longer marketed to local populations and therefore cannot properly represent the local culture it seeks to represent. This disproportionate ticket price has caused a deficit of community engagement, a lack of diverse representation, and has even begun to promote an alienation of the contemporary artist. The extreme architectural forms of these museums are creating a spectacle that mutilates the function of the museum and fails to satisfy the potential that the museum institution can have in unifying the artistic and cultural diversity of a city.

 

 

Reading Source:

Foster, Hal. “ART SINCE 1900: MODERNISM, ANTIMODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM. Hal Foster , Rosalind Krauss , Yve-Alain Bois , Benjamin Buchloh.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 24, no. 2 (2015)

Feature Image Source:

Pagnotta, Brian. “AD Classics: The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao / Gehry Partners.” ArchDaily. September 01, 2013. Accessed April 05, 2021. https://www.archdaily.com/422470/ad-classics-the-guggenheim-museum-bilbao-frank-gehry.