Still & Moving
The northwest corner of the new de Young Museum twists skyward, as if it's been pinched between an oversized thumb and forefinger and given a good tug. Maybe Jack's giant wanted the museum back but (wary of the San Franciscan) decided against it and let go. And so the tower remains, with nowhere to hide and with a mesh-like copper exterior that simultaneously conceals and reveals its vague internal movements. It takes a few moments to realize that what moves is actually a swarm of people up on the observation deck. The lively shimmer and shadow tones down the tower's looming ominousness and promises fairytale views to all who enter the museum proper.
***
"We've been waiting five years for this!" She speaks passionately, defiantly, while smoothing her shirt over her belly, and I laugh to think how these months of waiting for her first baby are nothing compared to the wait she endured for the return of her favorite urban respite. As Julie and I strolled the new exhibits and familiar collections, she told me stories about being pregnant. "The baby's always moving. Well, except when I'm moving. Then it's still. But when I'm still, it's crazy, all dancing and jumping! I can feel that on the outside now, too, not just inside...all that movement, if I'm still." Her observations began to form a theme in my mind: what is the function of an art museum--of the building itself--and what are the effects of being contained within one? Holding art still, a museum invites stilled observations, yet a well-designed floorplan creates movement, a necessary counterpoint to all the stillness.
***
Moving through the de Young does not necessarily allow a complete survey of the collections, but that's ok. Though basically rectangular, the floor plan is divided from a perfect axis into long, trapezoidal galleys, and the passageways that convey onlookers from room to room both delineate the angularity and maintain a natural pacing, from contemporary art to Oceanic sculptures, colonial American paintings to Mesoamerican artifacts. The unassuming staircase, placed discretely but strategically near the center of the building, turns the museum into a cleanly beveled Mobius strip: upstairs, then downstairs, from one culture to another, the planes of polished eucalyptus yield to infinite wanderings.
Chairs, even when tipped and toppled as in Catherine Wagner's quirky photographs, suggest stillness. From the pyramid-like perches on which to sit and stare at John Singer Sargent's society women, to an unidentified row of brocade and tassel in one hallway, to the scattered fallen apple "sculptures" in the garden, the reminder to sit and be still echoes throughout the museum. The point is solidified, literally, when one enters the contemporary art gallery. Trapped in a cement block (presumably some chunk of a house's foundation) is a common-looking oak chair. It is an impossible yet entirely plausible cross-section that transforms an indifference towards the everyday object (here viciously impaled by threaded steel cables) into contemplation.
***
While fixated on the still and moving aspects of the new museum, I was able to shrug off some of the more jarring idiosyncrasies of the collections, most notably the pre-twentieth century American paintings. For some reason, the transition from ancient Oceanic masks and representational African sculptures to more abstract contemporary art requires no great imaginative leap. Regardless of time or culture, a raw, effusive creative spirit connects those galleries (even though they are positioned far opposite each other). Polite pilgrim children, on the otherhand, interrupt one's harmonious meanderings. What should we make of a room full of staid American landscapes presented in gaudy gilded frames? But the new de Young is just that--new--and, in its infancy, will take a while to find sure footing. Or perhaps it will take the visitor a return visit or two to make sense of the unexpected juxtapositions, to appreciate both the bridled and unbridled (the still and moving) art.
***
"We've been waiting five years for this!" She speaks passionately, defiantly, while smoothing her shirt over her belly, and I laugh to think how these months of waiting for her first baby are nothing compared to the wait she endured for the return of her favorite urban respite. As Julie and I strolled the new exhibits and familiar collections, she told me stories about being pregnant. "The baby's always moving. Well, except when I'm moving. Then it's still. But when I'm still, it's crazy, all dancing and jumping! I can feel that on the outside now, too, not just inside...all that movement, if I'm still." Her observations began to form a theme in my mind: what is the function of an art museum--of the building itself--and what are the effects of being contained within one? Holding art still, a museum invites stilled observations, yet a well-designed floorplan creates movement, a necessary counterpoint to all the stillness.
***
Moving through the de Young does not necessarily allow a complete survey of the collections, but that's ok. Though basically rectangular, the floor plan is divided from a perfect axis into long, trapezoidal galleys, and the passageways that convey onlookers from room to room both delineate the angularity and maintain a natural pacing, from contemporary art to Oceanic sculptures, colonial American paintings to Mesoamerican artifacts. The unassuming staircase, placed discretely but strategically near the center of the building, turns the museum into a cleanly beveled Mobius strip: upstairs, then downstairs, from one culture to another, the planes of polished eucalyptus yield to infinite wanderings.
Chairs, even when tipped and toppled as in Catherine Wagner's quirky photographs, suggest stillness. From the pyramid-like perches on which to sit and stare at John Singer Sargent's society women, to an unidentified row of brocade and tassel in one hallway, to the scattered fallen apple "sculptures" in the garden, the reminder to sit and be still echoes throughout the museum. The point is solidified, literally, when one enters the contemporary art gallery. Trapped in a cement block (presumably some chunk of a house's foundation) is a common-looking oak chair. It is an impossible yet entirely plausible cross-section that transforms an indifference towards the everyday object (here viciously impaled by threaded steel cables) into contemplation.
***
While fixated on the still and moving aspects of the new museum, I was able to shrug off some of the more jarring idiosyncrasies of the collections, most notably the pre-twentieth century American paintings. For some reason, the transition from ancient Oceanic masks and representational African sculptures to more abstract contemporary art requires no great imaginative leap. Regardless of time or culture, a raw, effusive creative spirit connects those galleries (even though they are positioned far opposite each other). Polite pilgrim children, on the otherhand, interrupt one's harmonious meanderings. What should we make of a room full of staid American landscapes presented in gaudy gilded frames? But the new de Young is just that--new--and, in its infancy, will take a while to find sure footing. Or perhaps it will take the visitor a return visit or two to make sense of the unexpected juxtapositions, to appreciate both the bridled and unbridled (the still and moving) art.
posted by Heather at 10:33 AM
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