When my Gallery Management class went to the Nasher Sculpture Garden on Saturday, April 25th we knew that our professor Greg Metz was going to trash it. In his own words, as an artist, an educator, a person who has traveled widely visiting museums and galleries, he believes the intuitions who exhibit art have a duty to place the work within its historical context and help preserve the intent of the artist who created the work.
The architecture of the Nasher is world class, the art work amazing, but something happens that is less than desirable in the context of the design of the exhibits, especially the placement of art in the sculpture garden.
The architect Renzo Piano designed the Beyeler Museum in Basel, the Menil Collection in Houston and Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris (in collaboration with Richard Rogers). While we waited for Greg to arrive I went inside the museum and was struck by the beauty of the building. I was wondering what it was that he objected to so much. It turns out Greg has no objections to the building. He said that Ray Nasher was very particular about his legacy and that Piano was a great choice. His only improvement would be to take the honey combed roof and raise it up about 3 feet from the glass roof. The roof is designed to keep the damaging sunlight from the art, but allowing for the light to fill the building. It is busy and distracts from the minimalistic approach to the rest of the building.
What Greg pointed out which amazed me was that you can’t see this beautiful building from the street. The building is hid behind magnolia trees, oleander bushes and bamboo. We were asked to walk around the building after the lecture and see for ourselves.
The building was designed with the idea of an archeology dig with in an urban culture. The travertine marble on the outside of the building is rough, while inside it is smooth helping to transition the visitor from the outside urban setting to the refinement of the minimalistic setting of the gallery space.
Nasher’s collection of modern sculpture defined as art from the 1860 through the 1960’s and his dedication to bringing this art to Dallas made him known as the Ambassador of art to Dallas. I have visited the museum on several occasions and have caught other parts of the collection as they rotate through the gallery.
As you enter the building there is a gathering space. Where the front desk is and where groups like ours gather. It had a strange combination of sculpture pieces. Amazing enough a post modern Jeff Koons baroque bust across from an Eskimo monolith – like piece and a green drop like piece that was place in a traffic flow area. Needless to say, it didn’t work. And having Greg point it out was just amusing. The work was unbalances in its presentation and weird. The large green piece might have held its own against the Koons work, but the Eskimo piece needed to be isolated somewhere because if its busyness and overpowering size.
To be continued. (It gets better)
