Denver Art Museum
Oct. 12th, 2006 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakI was interested to see the new addition to the Denver Art Museum last Saturday. I had already formed some opinion of the project while watching it be built and no one will be surprised to learn that it was not positive. This is the Pontiac Aztek of buildings. I applaud the daring to be different, but the thing only eye catching and gimmicky. It isn't beautiful and it isn't a good design, it is an angular knock off of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum by Frank Gehry.
When walking around I often felt quite uncomfortable and I nearly fell over twice, disoriented by the lateness of the hour when I visited and the angle of the walls. The building works very hard to shout its architechtual importance without seeming to consider the functionaltiy and comfort of what the building is supposed to do. Call me crazy, but I'm rather fond of the idea of form following function. DAM was too busy "thinking outside the box" to consider that perhaps some sort of box to store and display art is exactly what was needed rather than a giant work of scuplture.
Unfortunately Museum Director Lewis Sharp, and others, were seduced by the World Class soundbite forever repeated by our former Mayor. They wanted to "put us on the map" as the new museum in Bilbao did for that Spanish city. I predict that contrary to putting us on the map this will get us attention for a year or perhaps even two, but after that this new building will be forgotten as yet another fad of yesteryear. In twenty years I bet residents of Denver will be asking, "Why did they build that thing?"
When walking around I often felt quite uncomfortable and I nearly fell over twice, disoriented by the lateness of the hour when I visited and the angle of the walls. The building works very hard to shout its architechtual importance without seeming to consider the functionaltiy and comfort of what the building is supposed to do. Call me crazy, but I'm rather fond of the idea of form following function. DAM was too busy "thinking outside the box" to consider that perhaps some sort of box to store and display art is exactly what was needed rather than a giant work of scuplture.
Unfortunately Museum Director Lewis Sharp, and others, were seduced by the World Class soundbite forever repeated by our former Mayor. They wanted to "put us on the map" as the new museum in Bilbao did for that Spanish city. I predict that contrary to putting us on the map this will get us attention for a year or perhaps even two, but after that this new building will be forgotten as yet another fad of yesteryear. In twenty years I bet residents of Denver will be asking, "Why did they build that thing?"
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Date: 2006-10-13 01:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-13 02:24 am (UTC)And it's so big, and slick-surfaced, that even planting a lot of vines wouldn't help.
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Date: 2006-10-13 04:39 pm (UTC)