Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 1 : Presscuttings, 1959-1962

ERARY SUPPLEMENT 1 ELBOURNE, SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 1957 New Yorkers: New Galleries EN THE DOORS OPEN ON THOSE BITTER, WINTRY SUNDAYS AND it is dark, a crowd mills loosely around the stone stairway that rises to the rk's Metropolitan Museum of Art. One current of the crowd, a huddle of s and drawn faces, enters the building in a steady procession. Although the atres-are open, art is calling these New Yorkers. By ROBIN BOYD, A.R.A.I.A. the exhibited paintings. sometimes renting of the actual paintings. In addition to its famous collec- tion of paintings.and art works the Metropolitan is offering at present such divertissements as a full -circle panorama of Versailles Palace and Gardens, seven feet high and 65 feet long, viewed from the centre in the company of tailors' dummies clothed in the period. It also has a reproduction of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel reduced to living- ! room scale and the "Life" trans- it parencies. l I To find any evidence of tude for the footsore visitor, one must jump an empty century to the v i modern galleries. Museum fatigue t is now recognised as a destroyer of enjoyment and the right mood for contemplation. The new galleries try to help the visitor with physical aids - lifts, escalators and closer - planning-and with frequent visual - stimulants, subtly coaxing him - from each intimate space towards ' the next enticing vista. Exhibits are ever changing, so Three of the most notable new galleries arc to be found. or soon will be, near New York. The .first was the big glass and concrete block of the Museum of Modern Art in West 53rd Street, a pioneer, built in 1939. and an in- stitution now in the life of New York. You take the lift to the third floor and descend through the galleries by way of the open staircase, over which balances Alexander Calder's famous mobile of iron "fish scales" on wire arms. In the permanent collection is one of the few Australian canvasses in New York: perhaps the strongest Ned Kelly which Sidney Nolan ever pain ted. At the bottom of the stairs and out the bock a big green garden has been cut Into New York's brick- work. A rectangular creek flows through and it dozen dark meta. and marble statues sport in the water and under the trees. At one side Is a tall wing of the museum, a "People's Art Centre," added in 1951 in' Philip Johnson. the archi- La:Loral director of the M.M.A. and designer with as much influence ai younger architects in Australia so in America. His style is icily pre- cise. Formal lines of black steel encase grey brick panels on the upper floors and a ground floor of glass. Excellent Cafeteria Overlooking the garden from be- hind the glass is the most gracious cafeteria in the world. Everything down to the elegant table acces- sories reflects the standards of Mr. Johnson, a bachelor of exact tastes, and museum visitors look almost embarrassed to be carrying a tray In such relined surroundings. The finest email gallery of recent rears is about 00 miles north of New York. in New Haven. Connec- ticut. It is the new wing of Yale Univers.ty's art gallery and design centre, designed in 1053 by Douglas Orr and Louis Kahn. The broad, open galleries here have been constructed without in- ternal supports. The necessarily thick ceiling structure of each floor is exposed, a deep, orderly, tri- angular trellis of chunky concrete. In the pockets of this are secreted the various types of lighting reflec- tors. which may be turned any- where, focussing attention where Desired and dramatising the island sculptural exhibits. The positions of the subdivistonal partitions within the big rooms are varied frequently: they may be at- tached to the ceiling grid anywhere and at any angle the director de- sires for a particular show. Unquestionably, the most elabo- rate. Imaginative and controversial gallery of the century will be the Guggenheim Museum of non- objective art, now about to be con- structed after more than 10 year,. planning. Its she Is marked by a , builder's hoarding round a hole in the ground, opposite the Metropoli- tan Museum, a few blocks up Fifth Avenue, The architect is Frank Lloyd Wright, and when the design Women on the balcony. Painting by Goya (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). every man." Mr. Wright said, "Here for the first time architecture appears plastic as one floor flows Into another . As time went on, however, various criticisms were levelled regretfully at some practical details of the building. Some suggest theft new race of New Yorkers will have to be bred with one leg shorter than the other as they sidle down viewing the paintings. But the slope is so gradual that it is unlikely to be no- ticeable and the museum Metals are convincedthat the spiral will be success. They are not so certain on some other details. An offlor of the mu- seum stood with Mr. Wright one day before a tall painting as they discussed the low ceiling -height of the proposed display bays or ramp. "Mr. Wright, how are we oftha fit in these high painting? asked. "Cut them In half,"t° he Wright. demonstrating of his cane. The tip of the can Mr. canvas and a flake of ot the floor. An assistant cook the picture and the divot down to the repair shop. Recounting the incident the of- ficer remarks: "Mr. Wright is not obsessed by a love of painting." Even so, neither he nor anyone else questions the prediction that the gallery, when it opens about two years from now, will be the most beautiful thing in the big city. WEIS first published in 1146 it, was hailed as the "masterwork of the world's greatest architect." The design has been modified many times since then, but the essential idea has remained unchanged. It is a great spiral, like five or six rings of a tightly coiled spring &pending slightly as it rises about 80 feet. Mr. Wright remarked that if the building were' to be blown sky-high, when it fell to earth It would still be in one piece and would bounce. The spiral is an assault on museum fatigue. Visi- tors are whisked to the top by lift upon arrival and thereafter are always walking downhill as they stroll past the bays of pictures on the outside wall. The huge well enclosed by the spiral is roofed with a plastic dome. Elaborate Magazine These make up a show presented by the popular magazine at the museum prior to a national tour. It Is called "Illuminations of Fifty Great Paintings" and presents a range of masterpieces from Giotto to Picasso in an elaborate form ,of reproduction which hardly admits to being second-best to the real thing. Color photographs of the originals are enlarged to life size on glass. The lighting concealed behind is controllable in intensity and color so that any imperfections in the chemical photographic process may be corrected by visual adjustment until a perfect simulation of the original is. theoretically, obtained., In this way a view of the masters may be enjoyed by people who can- not tour the U.S.A. to visit all the scattered galleries. Besides, some famous paintings are still in Europe. "It is a distinctly modern ap- proach to teaching and learning," says an official. A lot may be sail for the idea and a lot is tieing salt against it. mainly that there is a danger of :he super back-lit repro- ductions becoming "hopped up" or stopped up to a vitality which would surprise the masters. In the crowd around the chestnut roadster on the cobbled court In front of the Metropolitan Museum another current edges away from the building, satiated with art. The hands projecting from the woollen coats are pink now from the con- centrated heat of the galleries, and the faces are drawn now not by cold but by the exhaustion of ab- sorbing even the most popularly presented paintings, Lacking in Comfort One word that was no: in !be specifications of the 19th century's gallery builders was comfort. Whatever the delights of their endless salons and lofty flights of stairs. they did nothing to ease the strain of museum fatigue, a complaint which is even more no- .ceable today to a generation cased to taking its culture sitting down. At first everyone was thrilled by flits fascinating invention of one of :he true geniuses of the 20th Cen- tury. As the City Building Com- missioner said, "Wright's architec- tural conceptions do not rely on the architectural sophisticates alone for appreciation, but appeal to some- thing in the imagination of almost