One room with six artworks? More museums should be like this - The Times
Surely this must be the grand finale? So I muttered in rooms 11 to 34 of the Gerhard Richter exhibition that drew so many art-loving tourists to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this year. I liked it, obviously; he is one of the world’s greatest living artists and most of his famous works were there. But there are only so many monumental abstractions you can admire before they start to lose their impact, especially when you know that you could be spending those precious holiday hours sipping spritz or scoffing steak.
Museums and destinations know that big numbers and superlatives sell. The recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo was marketed in terms of its square footage (5.4 million) and construction cost ($1 billion). The warehouse-style V&A East Storehouse in London and Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, meanwhile, promise visitors a behind-the-scenes look at collections comprising hundreds of thousands of objects — few people’s idea of a relaxing day out. The 275-work Richter exhibition was, of course, billed as the largest exhibition of his art to be staged.
But I reckon a pickier, less OTT approach would be more satisfying for visitors. The Lola Mora Cultural Centre in San Salvador de Jujuy, northwest Argentina, has the right idea. This new museum — dedicated to the first prominent South American female sculptor — was purpose-built to house only six monumental Carrara marble figures. For about a century they had been exposed to the elements; now they occupy one long, curving room, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Yungas forest and the Andes beyond.
In its simplicity and focus, it reminds me of many of my favourite museums. Berlin has two of them, in Second World War-era bunkers.
At the Boros Collection many rooms are given over to a single large-scale sculpture (bold, blobby, often rude), allowing visitors to spend several minutes with each one and enjoy how it interacts with the stark concrete surroundings. Every few years the entire gallery is rehung with new works from the owners’ private collection.
The Feuerle Collection is designed as a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), juxtaposing Imperial Chinese furniture with contemporary art by Anish Kapoor and Zeng Fanzhi, spaced calmingly far apart. John Cage music plays as you enter. An underground pool reflects the art and architecture. Gloriously, there are no labels and, as is the case at the Boros, mobile-phone photography is banned.
While the Fondation Louis Vuitton goes in for maximalist hot-ticket shows, the Bourse de Commerce, another private museum in Paris, lets its art breathe. Rather than foisting all 10,000 works from the French billionaire François Pinault’s contemporary art collection on the public, the minimalist galleries in this former stock exchange display only a handful of artworks at a time, replacing them every few months.
On the Left Bank, the Giacometti Institute is another Paris museum that shows there’s no need to place paintings on every surface and sculptures in every nook. Here the library-like rooms in the early-20th-century townhouse are filled with a couple of dozen (rotating) sculptures and drawings by the Swiss artist that can be viewed by a maximum of 40 visitors each hour. Two minutes per masterpiece? Good luck getting that much time with the Mona Lisa.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the most popular exhibition in the UK this year — the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum — revolves around a single artwork. Sure, it may be nearly 230ft long, there will be a lot of elbowing and your back might ache, but at least you know exactly where the exit is.
What are your favourite small museums? Let us know in the comments below
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