the constituent museum

“Constituencies are fluid, mutable, protean. They grow, change, adapt, hybridize and reform…are always in the process of both becoming and unbecoming— constituencies result from a process of social production whose mediums and vehicles are, of necessity, collaborative.” - Becoming Constituent By John Byrne

The role of museums has traditionally been to teach, to decipher and deliver stories or history to the ‘passive’ visitor. The museum of the near future will be an active place of collaborative production. It will facilitate user driven programs and enable dialogue between disparate players. Its architecture must facilitate encounter, exploration and adaptation by its organization and by its formal expression.

“… it becomes possible to begin imagining the Constituent Museum of the future as a model of dispersion and connection as opposed to a model of expansion and colonization.” - Architectures of Use John Byrne

Often housed in intimidating exclusive architecture, symbols of institutional power, museums can be inaccessible to the very people they are in place to serve. Museums must not only be organized to adapt to change but must also signal the potential for openness. The traditional distinction between exhibition, education and events must be challenged. Engagement must happen at ‘street level’. Encounters must be easy and natural, facilitated by the architecture. We must simply ‘find oneselves’ within the museum without crossing a theashold.

making drawing painting

“We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.” - Mark Rothko

TRUTH: What can architects learn from artists? Rothko's large scale abstractions teach us the power of visceral experience. For Rothko and others, art is made as much by the painter as it is by the viewer. It is a sensory, ever changing dialog. The best architecture also engages in a sensory dialogue at scale. It surrounds us, it impact is unequivocal. ‘Flat’ forms for Rothko do not allude to something other. They move away from illusion and engage in a universal way. In architecture this sensory dialog incorporates space, light and material. It must speak to everyone moving beyond metaphore toward a visceral universal experience.

Rothko's work was in many ways a summary of the trajectory from the early 1900's (Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915) but he reintroduces the idea that paintings can be emotive. Other artists have been seriously engaged in this work of revealing 'truths', but perhaps none more seriously than Robert Irwin.

HERE AND NOW: Irwin, unlike many of his contemporaries, operates on the edge of failure. He is interested in connecting us physically / experientially / phenomenally through art to our environment and the moment we are in, here and now. 

"...The forms of art and of non-art have always been connected; their occurrences shouldn’t be separated as they have been...."
-Donald Judd (From The Plain Beauty of Well made things by Karen Stein)

PLAIN BEAUTY: I put Judd across the well away from those artists seeking 'truth' in the form of a sensory response. Judd was seeking to eliminate the distinctions between art, engineering, building and architecture...perhaps this is what is meant by a "critique of the sublime". There may be more to do with Duchamp and his "ready mades" than with abstract expressionism (at least by coincidence).
Architects must understand their medium: light, space, color, form and material properties. We must take a hands on approach in our work. We must understand qualities, techniques and embrace experimentation through construction and like Judd, we must understand the plain beauty of well made things.