Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

To gaze upon Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's only building in the United States is a moving experience. Literally. Perched upon the western shore of Lake Michigan, the spectacular structure features ninety ton wings that open and close twice daily. If winds are over 23 knots for three minutes or more, they close automatically.

Dramatic lighting effects from the iconic Brise Soleil change constantly due to open and closed positioning and weather fluctuations. Named for founders of Quad Graphics, (printers of Architectural Digest, Sports Illustrated, and National Geographic), the Quadracci Pavillion's skylit interior is often compared to a cathedral.

Innumerable opportunities for light to slice through the building at unusual angles create interesting shadow play on the white marble floors and structural shapes and surfaces.

Dale Chihuly's glass sculpture explodes with curlicued colors in contrast to Alexander Calder's serenely contained mobile of circles - a shape repeated in the elevator, stair shafts, and 'portholes' in the walls.

No detail was overlooked. Calatrava designed everything from the gift shop's elegant display units to the heated underground parking structure beneath the museum. White and well lit with repeating structural design elements from above, the architect has elevated the status of the lowly parking lot. And if you happen to go on a freezing winter day, the welcome blast of warmth upon exiting your car is a godsend.

Early morning finds the sun rising over Lake Michigan to the east and the Brise Soliel still closed. Notice the rectangular building in the far background....it's important.

Calatrava isn't the only architectural luminary to hold a claim on MAM. The rectangular building in the distance, designed by Eero Saarinen and opened in 1955, holds an important pedigree. We'll get into that in the next post. See you then!

                   To learn more: www.mam.org

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Keep cruisin'....

          Kimball Art Museum

Modern Art Museum

                    Dallas Museum of Art

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Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas TX

The Nasher Sculpture Center is a manifestation of Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s vision for an outdoor 'roof-less' museum - a peaceful retreat to enjoy both art and nature. Their goal was achieved with airy indoor galleries that visually expand to an enclosed outdoor sculpture garden.

Set in the Art District next to the Dallas Art Museum, the building is yet another Texas tip-of-the-hat to the Kimbell Museum and Louis Kahn: architect Renzo Piano's long walls of creamy Italian travertine outline five long parallel pavilions, each topped with barely-there barrel vaulted ceilings.

Cranes shown in the background were busy covering the nearby freeway to create an Art Park, which was specified over thirty years ago as part of a sixty-eight acre master plan.  

 What a treat to visit during an exhibition of works featuring Spanish artist Jaume Plensa.

The 'museum without a roof' was achieved through an innovative custom design: delicate glass panes are suspended on top of narrow steel ribs and supported by thin, stainless steel rods in the barrel vaulted ceiling. A cast-aluminum sunscreen device, specifically designed for the project, floats above the glass. Because the individual sunshade apertures face due north to block direct sunlight, controlled natural light is allowed to filter into the galleries, most often eliminating the need for artificial illumination. Brilliant!

Three central pavilions on the main floor serve as galleries that gently flow from one to another, while the outer two pavilions house offices and public spaces. 

The lower level features an additional gallery for light sensitive sculptures, and....

....an indoor auditorium - which could have easily been cold and confined - that ingeniously opens up and onto an outdoor terraced garden.

Born with pre-Columbian art purchased on a trip to Mexico in 1950, the Nashers expanded their collection exponentially over the next thirty years to include Modern and young living artists. Mr. Nasher liked to rotate pieces in his commercial real estate developments, including Northpark Center, which to this day combines mall shopping with gallery hopping. By 1987, the Nasher Collection had gained international recognition and was one of the first exhibitions in the Dallas Museum of Art’s new downtown building. Subsequent exhibitions of the collection followed in Washington, DC, Madrid, Florence, and Tel Aviv, prior to settling in its new home.

A huge Richard Serra has plenty of room to breathe in the outdoor space, and delicate tree trunks are lightly embraced by Jaume Plensa's bronzes. I'll leave you now to stroll/scroll through the rest of the garden at your leisure. See you next time!

          To learn more: Nasher

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 Keep cruisin'.... 

           Dallas Museum of Art

 Crow Collection of Asian Art

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Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA

Halfway between the beach and downtown LA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's sprawling campus feels like a city of its own.

Coming as close to the street as possible, The Art of the Americas Building used to loom - some said oppressively - over Wilshire Boulevard. But Fan Palms have now grown to a height that softens the effect, and the shadow play on the building creates a much more interesting facade. 

LACMA lies in an area known as Museum Row, across the street from the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum, and Craft and Folk Art Museum, and adjacent to the Page Museum and LaBrea Tar Pits. 

The recently renamed Art of the Americas Building was added in 1986 to increase exhibition space and to house the expanding modern and contemporary art collections. That was an exciting year for art lovers in LA, as two major museum openings happened within months of each other: LACMA’s addition and the new Museum of Contemporary Art.

Originally a part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was formed as an independent, art-focused institution in 1961. LA architect William Pereira won the commission over Mies van der Rohe to design what was to be the largest new museum built in the country since the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Three buildings comprised the first phase that opened in 1965 at its present location: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, and what is now the Hammer Building.

The Palm Sculpture garden, designed by artist Robert Irwin and landscape architect Paul Comstock, utilizes over thirty types of palm trees that help unify and give a cohesive look to the entire museum campus. In the Rodin Sculpture Garden, palms help soften street traffic noise and provide a visual canopy that beautifully complements the powerful bronzes. 

Chris Burden’s Urban Light graces the front of LACMA’s new entrance on Wilshire Boulevard. The installation is comprised of 202 antique cast-iron streetlights gathered from around the Los Angeles area. Powered by solar panels, they offer a wonderful, warm welcome to both museum attendees and passing traffic at night. 

At one point it looked as if the entire mish mosh of LACMA’s buildings might be razed and replaced with a whole new Rem Koolhaas-designed museum for an ungodly price. Cooler heads prevailed, and Renzo Piano was hired to design a three phase addition, completing the first, Broad Contemporary Art Museum, in early 2008. We'll continue exploring the buildings and collections of LACMA in an upcoming post.

          Learn more: lacma.org

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Keep cruisin'....

LaBrea Tar Pits and Page Museum                 

Getty Villa

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