"Our museums conjure up for us a Greece that never existed". - How does it sound? Read further.
In museum circles, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation Thomas Krens has a controverisial reputation. He has challenged the definitions of high art with exhibits such as "The art of the motorcycle" (1998), rewritten the book on how to run a museum, and transformed the Guggenheim into a global brand, with currently five museums (NY, Venice, Las Vegas, Berlin and the Frank Gehry Bilbao museum) and one to be added in Abu Dhabi.
He picks 27 more-or-less random images that demonstrate that beauty is truth: an Egyptian sculpture, a Chinese bronze, Michelangelo, paintings by Leonardo, Rubens, Picasso, Matisse, Vermeer, Warhol, sculptures by Beecroft, Richard Serra, and more. All these are objects of beauty: how do you tie them together? How do we experience art, truth and beauty? How do we consume culture? How do we contain/communicate the richness of our culture? Truth and beauty don’t reside in the objects themselves, but in the nature of the communication between the object and the viewer. The public art museum is an 18th century idea, the idea of an encyclopedia, presented in a 19th century box, an extended palace, that more or less fulfils its structural destiny sometime toward the end of the 20th century. AndrĂ© Malraux (1952): "Our museums conjure up for us a Greece that never existed". So the museum was an artificial space. Moreover, until recently most art museums have focused only on European and American art. Museums have to understand that all institutions change. Cultural narrative are infinite and endless. There is also a political dimension: museums need to become cultural agitators, while keeping being curators of collections. Plus: audience matters; art is for the masses. We need to make sure that the objects can tell a story and that story can be communicated. At the Guggenheim we think of museums as platforms and networks of exchange. Our buildings are based on the idea that 1+1=3. (Krens also talks about the Guggenheim projects for new museums that weren’t built). The current Guggenheim proposition: bridges to the Middle East, with the Abu Dhabi project. AD is mostly desert, but unlike Dubai is made of many islands, and the local government is planning to develop one with a big cultural district "that will become one of the biggest concentrations of culture in the world". There will be a Guggenheim, a Louvre, a performing art center, various other museums, a Yale University campus, a Biennale platform, etc built by star architects (Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel etc). There are also plans to extend the concept of the museum out into the desert.
Excerpted from: http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/28/ted2008_what_is_2/
In museum circles, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation Thomas Krens has a controverisial reputation. He has challenged the definitions of high art with exhibits such as "The art of the motorcycle" (1998), rewritten the book on how to run a museum, and transformed the Guggenheim into a global brand, with currently five museums (NY, Venice, Las Vegas, Berlin and the Frank Gehry Bilbao museum) and one to be added in Abu Dhabi.
He picks 27 more-or-less random images that demonstrate that beauty is truth: an Egyptian sculpture, a Chinese bronze, Michelangelo, paintings by Leonardo, Rubens, Picasso, Matisse, Vermeer, Warhol, sculptures by Beecroft, Richard Serra, and more. All these are objects of beauty: how do you tie them together? How do we experience art, truth and beauty? How do we consume culture? How do we contain/communicate the richness of our culture? Truth and beauty don’t reside in the objects themselves, but in the nature of the communication between the object and the viewer. The public art museum is an 18th century idea, the idea of an encyclopedia, presented in a 19th century box, an extended palace, that more or less fulfils its structural destiny sometime toward the end of the 20th century. AndrĂ© Malraux (1952): "Our museums conjure up for us a Greece that never existed". So the museum was an artificial space. Moreover, until recently most art museums have focused only on European and American art. Museums have to understand that all institutions change. Cultural narrative are infinite and endless. There is also a political dimension: museums need to become cultural agitators, while keeping being curators of collections. Plus: audience matters; art is for the masses. We need to make sure that the objects can tell a story and that story can be communicated. At the Guggenheim we think of museums as platforms and networks of exchange. Our buildings are based on the idea that 1+1=3. (Krens also talks about the Guggenheim projects for new museums that weren’t built). The current Guggenheim proposition: bridges to the Middle East, with the Abu Dhabi project. AD is mostly desert, but unlike Dubai is made of many islands, and the local government is planning to develop one with a big cultural district "that will become one of the biggest concentrations of culture in the world". There will be a Guggenheim, a Louvre, a performing art center, various other museums, a Yale University campus, a Biennale platform, etc built by star architects (Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel etc). There are also plans to extend the concept of the museum out into the desert.
Excerpted from: http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/28/ted2008_what_is_2/
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