MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN.- Contemporary museum architecture is the focus of the exhibition Museums for a New Millennium: Concepts, Projects, Buildings, on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum May 24 – August 4, 2002. This exhibition presents a cross-section of the most significant museum projects that have been designed and built within the last ten years, or are presently under construction. Among those featured in this exhibition is the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion, designed by Santiago Calatrava, which opened in October 2001. Museums for a New Millennium at the Milwaukee Art Museum is sponsored by CG Schmidt, Inc. and Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates, Inc.
According to Russell Bowman, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, “We are in the midst of one of the most dynamic museum building booms in history. Museums for a New Millennium documents this phenomenon with the most important museum building projects of our time.”
The exhibition presents drawings, photographs and original models of 25 architectural milestones from around the world. The featured projects, all key works by internationally renowned architects, offer a cross section of the complex panorama of museum architecture designed at the close of the twentieth century. The selection includes the finest examples of recent museum architecture, highlighting the buildings that are representative of significant architectural currents and cultural demands. The span of works presented in Museums for a New Millennium is broad, ranging from Norman Foster’s Carré d’Art in Nîmes, France, begun in 1984, to Zaha Hadid’s futuristic design for The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, scheduled to be completed in 2003.
Bowman states, “We are very pleased that the Calatrava-designed museum addition is represented among this prestigious group and that our community will be able to see how Calatrava’s unique vision has contributed to the optimistic future of museum architecture. This exhibition puts his work in Milwaukee in a larger context.”
As museums have evolved as public institutions, they have been required to be more than simply repositories for art. Many museums have responded to an increased demand for space and for leisure-oriented visitor services such as restaurants and retail stores. The challenge facing architects is to design a successful building that will itself be a work of art, yet will not upstage the art it is constructed to house. Recent building projects have illustrated that innovative, dramatic architecture can serve the art and significantly increase the recognition of the building, its architect and its city.
The expansion of the Milwaukee Art Museum, which was the first Calatrava project completed in the United States, has become an important cultural destination due to its dramatic design. Calatrava’s expansion, set on Milwaukee’s scenic lakefront, features a striking glass reception hall, a suspended pedestrian bridge, and a moveable winglike steel sunshade (brise soleil) that spans wider than a Boeing 747. Exemplary of the projects showcased in the Museums for a New Millennium exhibition, the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion is a result of both cutting-edge technology and old-world craftsmanship.
Following its run at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Museums for a New Millenium travels to five venues in North and South America and five museums in Japan.
Museums for a New Millennium: Concepts, Projects, Buildings is a project of the Art Centre Basel, Switzerland, coordinated under the direction of Suzanne Greub. Scientific curators and editors of the catalogue are Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and Angeli Sachs, from the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. The exhibition is curated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Margaret Andera, assistant curator.
