Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Denise Scott Brown
Art and Architecture Get a Refresh on the California Coast
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has undergone multiple renovations in its 80-plus years. This spring it has opened later on nonetheless some other.
This article is office of our latest special section on Museums, which focuses on new artists, new audiences and new ways of thinking about exhibitions.
SAN DIEGO — The Pacific Ocean surf steadily lapping at the coast not far from the newly renovated and expanded Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego serves every bit a metaphor for the successive waves of architecture that have formed the institution since it was founded.
Loftier on a bluff here in the flush village of La Jolla, information technology was established in 1941 in the Irving Gill-designed home of the philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps. The museum — which has had several different names over the years — was expanded 3 times over the decades by the business firm then known every bit Mosher & Drew, and in 1996 received a major makeover from the former Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.
Now, the New York firm Selldorf Architects has had its plough, coming up with an addition and overhaul that may be the most transformative nevertheless — and one that has incorporated the previous iterations.
Opened Apr 9, the $105 million projection doubles the overall square footage of the museum, and quadruples the gallery infinite, transforming the institution and what information technology can do. The museum was airtight for 3 years during structure, although its satellite co-operative in downtown San Diego, established in 2007, remained open.
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A infinite crunch had been hampering the museum for years, and was forcing the staff to make tough choices.
"Nosotros couldn't accept a special exhibition on view at the same time as our permanent collection," said the museum's director, Kathryn Kanjo, standing in front end of the near-completed museum on a sunny March 24-hour interval. She added that the problem was exacerbated considering "our collections have more than doubled in the last 40 years."
The museum is showing off its new amplitude with a special exhibition, "Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s," featuring 94 works, as well as several galleries displaying permanent collection pieces.
Ms. de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) was a French artist who gained fame for colorful and daring works, every bit when she had a sharpshooter fire a rifle at sculptures she had embedded with paint-filled balloons. She lived the concluding phase of her life in La Jolla.
The expansion project here has had a long timeline. Selldorf Architects won a competition to design information technology in 2014.
"It seems like we've been waiting for this for years — and nosotros literally accept been," said the philanthropist Irwin Jacobs, a co-founder of Qualcomm. Forth with his wife, Joan, he donated $20 one thousand thousand for the projection; the new building is named after the couple. (They threw in a couple of sculptures, besides, including a pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama.)
In addition to the demand for space, Ms. Kanjo said that the museum's brief was, "Please attempt to respect our architectural legacy, but also bring some kind of clarity to it."
For the architectural firm's founder, Annabelle Selldorf, the project was highly-seasoned because it was squarely in her wheelhouse in one way, but also allowed her to push her own limits.
Epitome
"People ever recollect we do sensitive historical renovations, just that's not all nosotros do," Ms. Selldorf said.
Her many high-profile cultural projects include the 2001 transformation of an Upper East Side mansion into the Neue Galerie New York, David Zwirner'due south 20th Street gallery in Chelsea and the forthcoming renovation of the Frick Collection.
"It matters a groovy deal because it's new," Ms. Selldorf said of the San Diego museum. "It's my biggest new-congenital institution. And it stands on its own two feet."
The primary add-on is on the southern end of the museum, on a lot that was purchased to provide room for expansion. Ms. Selldorf used textured concrete and travertine, amidst other materials, to create what she called "a space that is well-balanced, well-proportioned, calm, focused and not about gesture" — significant that it doesn't accept a hitting shape that calls attention to itself.
Prototype
Prototype
In that, she was in alignment with both current and onetime museum leadership.
"Nosotros were opposed to having a starchitect pounding their own chest," said Hugh Davies, the museum'due south previous director, who was involved in the initial phases of the projection. "But we actually did need more space — it wasn't a gratuitous expansion."
Some of the new galleries replace a former auditorium infinite, giving them dramatic, 20-foot ceilings, and the exhibition spaces are varied in shape throughout.
Mr. Jacobs noted that the circulation through the museum is at present easier, besides. "She gave us a coherent way for people to bout," he said of Ms. Selldorf's programme.
The architect also kept in mind the most obvious affair about the museum: its siting, a relatively rare seaside spot for an fine art institution. "It'due south a spectacular location, and the views are phenomenal," Ms. Selldorf said.
To connect the museum to nature, she turned a small parking lot on the north finish of the campus into a sculpture garden, and she added terraces around the building. Skylights and vertical windows bring the site's singled-out natural lite and coastal views into the new galleries.
Knitting together multiple iterations of the museum had its challenges, and one change made by Ms. Selldorf ruffled a few feathers: She removed a line of thick columns that stood in front of the Gill edifice and were part of the Venturi Scott Brown blueprint.
A petition signed past architects and preservationists asked that it be kept as-is, and said that changes would be a "tremendous mistake."
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Ms. Selldorf — who didn't substantially alter about of the Venturi Scott Brown pattern, including the striking Axline Courtroom, formerly the archway area — said that her intention in removing the columns was to accomplish "greater clarity across the history of all the edifice types."
She noted that the columns were an intervention of sorts themselves, given that they were placed in front of Gill's much earlier structure, built in 1916. (For anyone who'due south curious well-nigh them, the columns are now preserved next door to the museum, in the garden of the La Jolla Historical Club.)
"You lot can today see the Irving Gill building completely unencumbered," she added.
Denise Scott Dark-brown, who was a principal of Venturi Scott Brownish, was among the people who objected, and Ms. Selldorf fabricated a point of coming together with her in person.
"Ultimately, I was able to speak with Denise, and I'thou so glad about that," Ms. Selldorf said. "My only regret is that I didn't speak with her correct at the beginning of the project."
At present that essentially more art will be on view, museum visitors will be able to come across the contours of the museum'due south drove more clearly.
"Our forcefulness really is in art from this region, the West Coast," Ms. Kanjo said, particularly the California Light and Infinite movement of the 1960s and '70s, featuring artists similar Larry Bell and Helen Pashgian, both of whom have works currently on view.
The regional focus extends to the due south, besides.
Paradigm
"We're committed to the border, then we take strength in Latinx work," Ms. Kanjo said, adding, "Nosotros're closer to Tijuana than to Los Angeles."
The opening roster includes collections by the artist known simply as Marisol (born María Sol Escobar); Celia Álvarez Muñoz; and Alejandro Diaz. Likewise on view is a broad array of well-known artists, including Robert Irwin, Jack Whitten and Helen Frankenthaler.
Ms. Selldorf said that her goal with the whole blueprint, and particularly with the transparent archway pavilion, which is largely made of glass, was to brand people want to get inside to see the fine art.
"I thought about how I can bring people in, and make them feel similar they are welcome there," she said. "I know that sounds a trivial bit trite, but I think it's really important."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/arts/design/museum-of-contemporary-art-san-diego-expansion.html
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