The old-new Museum of Fine Arts
In memory of Péter Reimholz
MúzeumCafé 14.
Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic of the New York Times, has written about the end of an architectural era, not merely in connection with the world economic crisis, but also with reference to Norman Foster’s AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, which opened in October. The definition of the end of an era is an arbitrary matter, yet in recent decades there was plenty of reason to talk about a ‘museum boom’. Considering the number of new and renewed museums, first in Europe, then in the US and then worldwide, it can be unequivocally stated that feverish activity was conducted in this field. The architecture of the Beaubourg, namely the Centre Pompidou in Paris (Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, 1977) broke with all the previous traditions of museum architecture, making it obvious that a new museum building not only had to correspond to the current spirit of contemporary art, but also aimed to actively participate in the reinterpretation of cultural concepts, ‘the social contracts’ highlighted following the end of art history. These complicated and dense textual issues are being tackled by architect Tamás Karácsony as he takes on reconstruction of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. In the 19th century the tradition of philhellenism played a central role in establishing public museums and, correspondingly, in their architecture. The tradition of Greek revival determined the two archetypal examples of modern museum architecture: Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin and Leo von Klenze’s Glyptothek in Munich. This was also the pattern Albert Schicke-danz followed with the building of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. Another tradition was represented by modern culture, which was distinct from the spaces and art concepts influenced by historical consciousness, being rather inspired by universal contemporary rationalism and the avant-garde spirit. The archetypal building here was the MoMA in New York (Edward Durrell Stone and Philip Goodwin, 1939), which gained its present form with additions designed by Yoshio Taniguchi in 2004 following partial reconstruction by Cesar Pelli. The exclusivity of a learning process focussing on the contemplation of individual works of art defined the identity of museums for many decades. Centre Pompidou represented the end of all such certainty when it interpreted the museum as both laboratory and agora – art as a common activity of a democratic cultural community. While 19th-century museum buildings aimed to serve the public as temples of art, reproducing and reinterpreting the classic forms of Hellenism, in recent decades instead of their collections museum buildings themselves have become a focus of interest. The boundless individualism of star architects designing museums has corresponded to the cultural logic of late capitalism. Frank O. Gehry’s Guggenheim building in Bilbao is as much an imprint of that as the Getty Centre by Richard Meier dominating Los Angeles and Norman Foster’s fascinating gesture in his covering of the British Museum’s Great Court (which caused more damage to the internal order of the museum than could have been imagined when it was being built). Yet, this absurd duality has also produced masterpieces such as Daniel Libeskind’s Jüdisches Museum in Berlin, which is truly a statement of the ‘void’. As the boom slowly dissipated in Europe and America, it became clear that new concepts and forms had become predominant in the new cultural geography of the ‘global art world’. This world of post-colonialist geopolitics involves a redefinition of museum geography – these institutions no longer have a dominating European or American essence. Corresponding to international economic trends, China, the Middle East and South America have been continuing the globalised version of the museum boom, while simultaneously adjusting to the needs of a redistribution policy in relation to symbolic goods. Today the question is not whether something within a culture belongs to the high or popular dimension, but how hybrid cultures which exist in separate fields but still interact with one another can be represented – as shown by the new wing of the Louvre in Paris presenting the art of Islam or the much criticised Louvre Abu Dhabi. Following the era of universal art history, the question is how the Museum of Fine Arts – whose universal art history collection is one of the greatest treasures of Hungarian national culture – can redefine itself, how that is reflected in the museum’s reconstruction and how it is influenced by the context of Budapest at the beginning of the 21st century. Karácsony has not designed the new elements next to the building but underneath the portico. In addition to logistical matters, these spaces are primarily for temporary exhibitions. The consequences of the reconstruction have an effect on the whole building. In particular the ground floor with its historicising halls requires some rethinking. A partial modification of the original building, involving some interior reconstruction and the creation of communication between the two parts represent the essence of the task – as Tamás Karácsony’s design precisely shows.