SFMOMA Members Preview Day

Another weekend museum opening: SF MOMA's new addition - a new building really - opened for a Member's Preview Day this weekend. This was special - it's a true gem.

Designed by Snohetta, the new building creates both a back-drop for the older Mario Botta building from 3rd Street and the Moscone Center, and a new "face" and entrance on Howard Street, a wavy, rhythmic sheet of stone (fiberglass reinforced polymer). Climbing the angled, wide stairway, one enters a broad and open lobby. 

Off to the left, back down toward the street, there is a special gallery for a Richard Serra installation and a seating area for talks and events - a series of curled steel panels that creates both courtyards and alleys. The piece is called "Sequence, and acts as a very tempting appetizer.

From the new lobby, one can see the "Living Wall" in the courtyard just above, and the grand stair draws you upward. However, we took the elevator to the top floor (the 7th) and stepped out onto a sunlit balcony - views over the roofs toward the Bay, and then back to the top edge of the "wavy" wall. From here, one can see and feel the mezmerizing layers and ripples of that surface.

Stepping back into the galleries, and there is a series of flowing areas - a bit less than discrete rooms, but a lot more than a continuous hall. The galleries have an unfinished feel; I wonder if the ceiling are showing their final finish.

Downstairs, the galleries maintain a similar flow, with views between and around the artwork; each gallery space gives peeks ahead and back. Here, the ceilings are finished, and there is more of a "white room" kind of gallery space working. The space just behind the wavy wall acts ad a stairway and vertical connector, though the stairs don't connect one right into the other, inviting visitors to stop at each level and explore.

On the 5th floor, is one of the main galleries for the Fisher Collection. Here the galleries feel truly polished and special, with a coved ceiling detail providing indirect and diffuse light. Again, the wall panels, never surround you; the corners spill into two or three adjoining spaces, and one wanders from moment to moment, artist to artist, and art piece to art pice. Several artists are features at the opening, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Agnes Martin are all given special spaces. There is a bit of magic in the scale: big enough to allow the over-scaled pieces to breathe, but small enough to give the spaces a room-like feel. That is, a room of Ellsworth Kelly "shapes" allows the viewer to enjoy each piece as well as the gathered pieces.

A crossing hallway on the 5th level re-connects the Botta building and the older Sculpture Garden, with a view down through a lighting grid to a special event space. On the 4th level, the same crossing hallway ends at the "Living Wall" courtyard - which is accessible from the 3rd level. On this Sculpture Terrace, one can truly enjoy the architecture and see how several of the larger building parts come together. Looking up, you can see the "bridge" connecting to the older Sculpture Garden on the 5th level, as well as the towers of the adjacent buildings. Looking back through the glass to the galleries, you can see past to the older Botta building. Peers around the corner and you can see the "cut" edge of the "wavy" wall, the joins between the old and new, and the street beyond. Walk to the other end, and you can see the Howard Street entrance and the other publics spaces below. Just inside the Sculpture Terrace. there is a special gallery showing Calder mobiles.

Just around the corner from the Calder gallery is a showcase of models and sketches from Snohetta showing the design process for the new building.

From there we descend the main stair in the new Howard Street Lobby, and through to the Botta building. We recall that there used to be a dark, square stair cased the previously connected all levels; the staircase has been removed, and the main space opened up to the older 3rd Street Lobby below - with a Calder mobile and a new, zig-zaggy, Snohetta stair back down to the street level.

And that's it, we did not finish our tour - the new building is just huge and it's difficult to imagine covering the whole thing in one morning. SF MOMA now has the scale, stature of collection, and sense of place to compete with any of the big modern museums. Can't wait to return.

Berkeley Art Museum Members Preview

Saturday, January 30, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) re-opened for a members' preview. Their new building was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who also design the ICA in Boston and The Broad in LA.

The building design is a combination of old and new; it's the former UC Berkeley printing plant, with the addition of a new cinema/theater and a connecting spine of stainless steel. The printing plant cues of art deco were preserved, and the functional north-facing saw-tooth sky-lights were re-created to fill the gallery spaces with natural light. There is a bit of a fiction that you are in the old printing plant; it is a new building behind an existing facade.

You enter along Center Street, below the extended terminus of the spine, and are brought into a large collection space. In front of you a multi-story hall, below the spine, leads to the theater; to your left, the space spills down to a wooden seating area. The main gallery spaces are wide and open, allowing plenty of room for installations and media pieces.

There is a tall, triangular sliver of a lobby for the theater; it's unclear how BAMPFA will use the space. The theater itself seems an excellent space to watch movies. On the second level, along the balcony over-looking the main hall is the cafe. Awkwardly, the end of the spine over-hanging Center Street is not a feature space - currently housing some small plants.

The second level, and the view looking down the spine as well as into the galleries below, is filled with wonderful shapes and counter-pointed lighting effects.

Take the fire-red stairs to the lower level and arrive at the galleries for the permanent collection, as well as the study and research areas. These galleries feel a bit less generous than the ones upstairs; a separate long gallery with a butcher-block floor houses the buddha.

One of the stated goals for the new facility to connect with "wider urban and public contexts". There seems to be some suggestion of this with the large, outside video display at the Addison Street end of the spine. Otherwise, there does not seem to be much of a nod to public spaces - the old building had a couple of public plazas (though not necessarily inviting public spaces).

Looking forward to vistiing during regular hours and getting to know the building.

The Great Restoration on the 99 Percent Invisible Podcast

Just a fascinating story about the restoration of Stirling Castle in Scotland, and why it's a bright, happy yellow (99 Percent Invisible, first 14 minutes of the podcast). The author and some of the folks interviewed don't sound too thrilled with the Castle's "new" appearance, but it sure takes an amazing picture.

Also tells a great story thought the drawings in the attached article - and why the restoration team made the decision they made. The interior with the hammer beam roof truss is just beautiful.

Drawing - a Practical Art Form

A fun little video about drawing - thanks Katharine! Of course we start with the Renaissance - but in Las Vegas, where fantasy and reality come together. Drawing is how we get from something we imagine to something we build.

British TV is awesome.

I love the idea in this video (jump to about 18:30) that because paper became plentiful in 15th century Tuscany, Leonardo's imagination is one of the first to have been consistently captured because he took the time to sketch out all his ideas

We also pickup the story of Brunelleschi (jump to 22:00), whose contribution of perspective drawing is was famously presented in a public demonstration in front the Duomo in Florence; and also of Palladio (jump to 25:30), whose drawings and books helped spread Renaissance classicism around the world.

Architecture, Language, and the Grand Tour

We join Kevin McCloud, as he follows in the footsteps of 17th century British architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, taking the "grand tour" through Italy. We line up the following important contributors, whose active professional lives were basically in succession:

• Brunelleschi (early-mid 1400's)
• Bramante (mid-late 1400's)
• Michelangelo (late 1400's to early 1500's)
• Palladio (early-late 1500's)
• Jones (late 1500's to early 1600's)
• Wren (mid 1600's to 1700)

After Jones and Wren brought Renaissance and Mannerist classicism back to Britain, the British would then spread it all over the world during their age of empire. The episode embedded above follows the development of the dome, from Florence (Duomo) to Rome (Tempieto, St. Peter's), and back to Britain (St. Paul's). From there we can infer the spread to North America: U. S. Capitol, state houses all over the U. S., and even San Francisco's City Hall.

A few things to note

We start with Brunelleschi's dome at Santa Maria del Fiore - here is a screen shot that may give you a sense of the scale of the building: the cathedral placed on MA's campus.

Of course, all of these architects also knew and studied the Pantheon. The Greeks and Romans, were the source the classical "language" or architecture that Palladio codified and cataloged in his Four Books. This volume served as an architectural sourcebook or sampler from which subsequent designers could pick and choose, arrange and re-arrange.

These ideas form the general basis for the Mannerist style of architecture that was typified by Palladio, but had it's start in the late Renaissance with people like Michelangelo. Here is a picture of the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo in Florence - stairs flow like rushing liquid, the columns are pushed in niches in the walls, columns float on brackets, pilasters taper to the bottom. Rules are established and broken. A new language and a new way of thinking is being invented.

For more, and for your summer reading pleasure:

 How Architecture Works
 by Witold Rybczynski

 For an Architecture of Reality
 by Michael Benedikt

 Inferno
 by Dan Brown