The Architecture of Art Museums: A Decade of Design, 2000–2010 by Ronnie Self

Abstract

I I I I,, BOOK REVIEWS instrument of modernization. The essays in this section, however, defy the stereotype of a universally applicable and politically neutral "International Style" and explore the politically complex regions of eastcentral and southern Europe, in which the diverse meanings of architecture problematize the complex relationships between postwar modernism and the state. The essays in "Making Religion Modern" explore the complicated relationship between religious and architectural engagement with modernity in Western Christianity following World War II. Based on the fact that one of the central concerns of modernity was its increasing critique of religion, this section aims to articulate for a modern architecture that is interwoven with efforts to reform, perhaps even update liturgical practices. Of central importance is the relationship between religion and the modern world, which is not only the result ofindustrialization but also of "the philosophical implications of the scientific revolution and Enlightenment rationality." Through distinct but complementary methods and analyses, these essays demonstrate not only the complexity of a relatively unstudied part of architectural history but also the value of bringing into dialogue the multiple discourses and histories involved in the phenomenon of modern religious architecture. In "Modernism and Domesticity," the contemporary meaning of modernism, as it was constructed in the postwar years, was complex and contested. To some, the meaning was reduced to aesthetic concepts, sometimes spatial, functional, or technological; to others, it was associated with the Corbusian Five Points of Architecture, the Californian house, or the latest kitchen gadgetry. Each essay presents a view of these contested definitions ofthe modern and exposes a vulnerable, anxious, and perhaps fully exposed postwar domestic space within its postwar cultural geography. ARRIS 68 § Volume 25 § 2014 Taken together, these three spheres form a cohesive argument about how the modern was infinitely varied in the postwardecades; definitions, forms, geographies, and aesthetic conventions evolved, changed, and disintegrated. The book sanctions, appropriates, adopts, or adapts in the political, religious, and domestic realms. The more compelling and revealing question thus becomes not "What was modern?" but how was modernism-in all ofits competing formssanctioned , appropriated, adopted, or adapted in the political, religious, and domestic realms to complete the larger postwar narrative? ANTONIO PETROV University ofTexas San Antonio, Texas THE ARCHITECTURE OF ART MUSEUMS 2ooo~2cHo RON: NIE SELF Ronnie Self. The Architecture ofArt Museums: A Decade ofDesign, 2000-2010. London: Routledge, 2014, 308 pp., hardcover and paperback, ISBN 9780415506526 . The August 2010 issue of Vanity Fair published a list of the "Greatest Buildings of the Last Thirty Years," as selected and voted on by a carefully invited list of fifty elite architects. Number one on this list was Frank 0. Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, of 1997, and number two was Renzo Piano's Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, of 1987. Not only do these selections indicate that the building type of the art museum has become the holy grail of architectural commissions, but it reveals the two poles of aspiration in art museum design: at Bilbao, the museum is seen as an "iconic" symbol of a city's architecture, while in Houston, the museum is viewed as an understated, elegant, serene cloister for the contemplation of art. BOOK REVIEWS In his book, The Architecture ofArt Museums: A Decade ofDesign, 2000-2010, architect Ronnie Self (an alumnus of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and a professor of architecture at the University of Houston) looks at eighteen ambitious art museum projects from the first decade of the twenty-first century (twelve in the United States and six in Europe) from top international architects in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The case studies on American museums are derived from his work as a critic for the French journal Archicree from 2000 to 2010, while the European case studies appear here for the first time. A thoughtful introduction establishes the prominence ofthe building type in contemporary architecture and looks at the various problems confronting architects in the genre, from debates on the prominence of architecture in buildings for the exhibition ofaesthetic objects, to problems of natural versus artificial lighting, to the myriad functions beyond the galleries that museums require today, from performance spaces, to food services, to education, to...