Space is at a premium when it comes to museums. Only the best of the best of a museum’s collection gets the prime real estate that is displayed to the public. In fact, it is estimated that only 2% to 4% of a museum’s collection is actually shown to guests.
As museums try to show more of their collections to visitors, many contemporary designs are beginning to incorporate the exterior of the building as a gallery. Now, you aren’t going to see the Louvre plastering the Mona Lisa onto the side of the building like a wanted poster anytime soon, but museums are starting to realize art installations specifically designed for the exterior of a building can prove to be quite valuable.
Buildings have made use of their exterior walls as a display in the past. Chicago’s Tribune Tower is covered with over 150 historically significant artifacts from around the world that are built into the structure’s limestone wall.
Col. Robert McCormick brought back the first piece from a church that was shelled in Belgium during World War I. Upon returning to Chicago, he then told his correspondents around the world to obtain pieces of famous buildings and bring them back.
Embedded in Tribune Tower’s limestone walls are pieces of the Greek Parthenon, the Roman Colosseum, London’s Houses of Parliament, and dozens more, all permanently on display for passersby.
One of the artifacts embedded in Tribune Tower's limestone exterior. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain.
While these artifacts aren’t necessarily art installations, the exterior walls have still been transformed into a display.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, however, took this idea one step further by actually designing the building with specific solutions to best utilize exterior wall space as a gallery.
As a new white paper, Exterior as Gallery, from the New York-based Cooper Robertson outlines, the new Whitney Museum of American has facades that face Manhattan’s popular High Line park and the Hudson River, making them ideal viewing galleries.
Works of art can be anchored to the building’s terraces or suspended from the facades. A combination of vertical anchor points on the façade and a grid of horizontal points on the terraces allows for the installation of two- and three-dimensional artwork that can be viewed from multiple angles and levels. In total, there are four art terraces connected by an exterior stair leading from one to the other.
For displaying pieces from the façade, the design team used a standard system of bolts that can be tethered to or removed and replaced with eye hooks or other hardware to enable the museum to attach a screen, stretch a canvas, or suspend a super-scale object from the side of the building, according to the white paper. The façade was also reinforced to accommodate the addition of a 600-pound pull load.
The terraces required a different solution in order to display art and to keep it secured, especially in instances of high winds. A cylinder is bolted to a base plate that is then fastened to the structure below. Each cylinder is filled with foamed-in-place insulation. These cylindrical anchors align with the beams of the building’s rigorous structural grid in order not to exceed weight limitations. The terraces also have technology consolidation points for displays that require electricity and other AV needs.
If these additions prove successful, odds are, the Whitney Museum of American Art won’t be the last museum to apply these strategies.
Read the entire Cooper Robertson Exterior as Gallery white paper, here.
Related Stories
| Sep 12, 2011
Living Buildings: Are AEC Firms up to the Challenge?
Modular Architecture > You’ve done a LEED Gold or two, maybe even a LEED Platinum. But are you and your firm ready to take on the Living Building Challenge? Think twice before you say yes.
| Apr 13, 2011
Expanded Museum of the Moving Image provides a treat for the eyes
The expansion and renovation of the Museum of the Moving Image in the Astoria section of Queens, N.Y., involved a complete redesign of its first floor and the construction of a three-story 47,000-sf addition.
| Apr 12, 2011
Entrance pavilion adds subtle style to Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
A $13 million gift from the Otis Booth Foundation is funding a new entrance pavilion at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. CO Architects, Los Angeles, is designing the frameless structure with an energy-efficient curtain wall, vertical suspension rods, and horizontal knife plates to make it as transparent as possible.
| Jan 21, 2011
Sustainable history center exhibits Fort Ticonderoga’s storied past
Fort Ticonderoga, in Ticonderoga, N.Y., along Lake Champlain, dates to 1755 and was the site of battles in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. The new $20.8 million, 15,000-sf Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center pays homage to the French magasin du Roi (the King’s warehouse) at the fort.
| Jan 19, 2011
Industrial history museum gets new home in steel plant
The National Museum of Industrial History recently renovated the exterior of a 1913 steel plant in Bethlehem, Pa., to house its new 40,000-sf exhibition space. The museum chose VOA Associates, which is headquartered in Chicago, to complete the design for the exhibit’s interior. The exhibit, which has views of five historic blast furnaces, will feature artifacts from the Smithsonian Institution to illustrate early industrial America.
| Jan 19, 2011
Museum design integrates Greek history and architecture
Construction is under way in Chicago on the National Hellenic Museum, the nation’s first museum devoted to Greek history and culture. RTKL designed the 40,000-sf limestone and glass building to include such historic references as the covered walkway of classical architecture and the natural wood accents of Byzantine monasteries. The museum will include a research library and oral history center, plus a 3,600-sf rooftop terrace featuring three gardens. The project seeks LEED Silver.
| Nov 23, 2010
The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will house the former president’s library
The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will house the former president’s library and museum, plus the Bush Institute, is aiming for LEED Platinum. The 226,565-sf center, located at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, was designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.
| Nov 2, 2010
Cypress Siding Helps Nature Center Look its Part
The Trinity River Audubon Center, which sits within a 6,000-acre forest just outside Dallas, utilizes sustainable materials that help the $12.5 million nature center fit its wooded setting and put it on a path to earning LEED Gold.
| Oct 13, 2010
Tower commemorates Lewis & Clark’s historic expedition
The $4.8 million Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower in Hartford, Ill., commemorates explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark at the point where their trek to the Pacific Ocean began—the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
