The Art Museum in Modern Times

by Charles Saumarez Smith

A compelling examination of the art museum from a renowned director, this sweeping book explores how architecture, vision, and funding have transformed art museums around the world over the past eighty years. How have art museums changed in the past century? Where are they headed in the future? Charles Saumarez Smith is uniquely qualified to answer these questions, having been at the helm of three major institutions over the course of his distinguished career. For The Art Museum in Modern Times , Saumarez Smith has undertaken an odyssey, visiting art museums across the globe and examining how the experience of art is shaped by the buildings that house it. His story starts with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the first museums to focus squarely on the art of the present rather than the past. When it opened in 1939, MoMA’s boldly modernist building represented a stark riposte to the neoclassicism of most earlier art museums. From there, Saumarez Smith investigates dozens of other museums, including the Tate Modern in London, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the West Bund Museum in Shanghai, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He explores our shifting reasons for visiting museums, changes to the way exhibits are organized and displayed, and the spectacular new architectural landmarks that have become destinations in their own right. Global in scope yet full of personal insight, this fully illustrated celebration of the modern art museum will appeal to art lovers, museum professionals, and museum goers alike. 50 illustrations

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Cultural

272 pages, Hardcover

Published April 13, 2021

Reviews

[Eileen Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its weighty subject, this book is an enjoyable lift. Written by a former museum director (of London’s National Portrait Gallery AND the National Gallery), the author is more than well experienced and has a deft hand with the pen.

The book begins and ends with thoughtful bookends, the first a very brief introduction to the history of museums and the final section a series of summarizing observations or take-aways. In between, he succinctly highlights about fifty 20th and 21st century art museums. That’s a wild number to take on, but he does a brilliant job. Smith dispatches each with just a few pages. The focus is on how architecture both shapes and is shaped by changing ideas of what a museum should be.

Smith sees a series of experiments over time, but suggests a pattern, a direction. From their didactic origins (still reflected strongly in the original MoMA), he traces a gradual tendency to leave the lessons behind. “Sequence, narrative and didacticism are regarded as old fashioned. Private and personal experience of works of art and the aestheticization of displays are paramount.” In fact, some of the museums he praises most (and which most appealed to me) are the small, intimate, quirky ones: the Neue Gallerie in New York, the Benesse House in Noashima, and the curious Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania. Of course, there are also immense projects, such as the Getty, Bilbao, and DIA Beacon. These exhibit another aspect he admires, which is the way the architects attend to and create both space and place.

It was an affirming wander through some great landmarks of art, reminding me of some of the great places I’ve been able to visit and leaving me yearning to see some places it seems unlikely I’ll ever make it to (such as the Louisiana in Denmark, and the Benesse in Japan).

I love his endorsement of museums as places for solitary contemplation, for reflection, for the discovery of both truths and beauty. But while I value these things and occasionally find them in some corners of the museum world, more often the experience of visiting is one of fighting through herds of tourists or fighting off ponderous narratives of art as a battle for social justice.

Art is more often today experienced as a battlefield.
And most of the time, I feel like I’m losing.

[Lowe Smith Jonsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bra överblick över museet från 30-talet till idag i en lång rad exempel. Även insiktsfull och intressant om de nödvändiga och farliga förnyelseprocesser museum genomgår.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting study of the changes in museum creation, following through specific details and architectural decisions that were involved. I wouldn’t say that it’s a casual read as it can be repetitive (I read this for research purposes) but very interesting!