{"id":64,"date":"2014-02-18T00:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T00:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/2014\/02\/18\/the-limits-of-preservation-moma-folk-art-museum\/"},"modified":"2022-06-21T15:19:15","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T19:19:15","slug":"the-limits-of-preservation-moma-folk-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/the-limits-of-preservation-moma-folk-art-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of Preservation: MoMA & Folk Art Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To those who haven\u2019t watched it,\u00a0this video<\/a>\u00a0gives some good insight into the players behind the MoMA expansion, and some good counter-arguments from the panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The panel, left to right: Cathleen McGuigan, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Reed Kroloff, Nicolai Ourousoff, Stephen Rustow, Karen Stein.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Times are tough at DS+R, their feet are in some muck. Liz Diller\u2019s presentation comes across as stilted and uninventive, which is strange coming from a firm that has successfully championed urban infills and refurbishments in the past decade. So why the rigidity, why the sense of inevitability? MoMA stated that DS+R\u2019s study of the American Folk Art Museum had to make adaptive reuse of the museum\u00a0in subordination<\/em>\u00a0to their curatorial goals, and we are being asked to accept that their study was exhaustive. But as Stephen Rustow says (in more diplomatic words, ~1:02:00), setting up that hierarchy from the start will guarantee demolition as the result. It\u2019s a selfish, aloof, very political move that makes the fate of AFAM appear truthfully sealed. The failure we are looking for is in that initial hierarchy\u2013 keeping AFAM whole should have been taken as the\u00a0primary<\/em>\u00a0given, commanding and directing MoMA\u2019s expansion, because only then could both sides of the argument come to a compromise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But of course these issues are never black-and-white. Preserving AFAM is a much more sensitive thing and a proper solution should fall in the gray area in between. First, there seems to be a very narrow definition of \u201cpreservation\u201d that even folks high up on the cred ladder are wedded to. The definition is that: in order to preserve a building, it must be completely untouched (or, the goal must be to alter it as little as possible). The panel brings up the term \u201cfacadism\u201d to highlight the cons of not adhering to this principle. It of course is much broader\u2013 Jorge Otero-Pailos commences that discussion at 1:16:00. Stephen Rustow \u2018s point that preservation is a much more varied undertaking and can take on many levels of demolition is absolutely true. There are numerous examples of buildings which have been only partially preserved (Lincoln Center, Cooper Union\u2019s Foundation Building renovation, Hearst Tower, Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Olivetti Showroom in Venice, MoMA\u2019s own 11 West 53rd St. for God\u2019s sake!)\u2013 it should never be out of the question to only keep certain elements of the original project intact (like eagles or facades)\u2013 all cities grow in this very fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lincoln Center Alice Tully Hall. Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photo by Robert Mintzes. Found on Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Cooper Union Foundation Building renovation in 1975, led by John Hejduk. Found on Jeffrey Jonas’ website, ferretronix.com\/cooper<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hearst Tower. Foster + Partners. Photo by Leonard J. DeFrancisci. Found on Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Picasso Museum. Jordi Garc\u00e9s. Photo by Wes Neuenschwander. Found on Flickr<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Olivetti Showroom. Carlo Scarpa. Photo by Kenta Mabuchi. Found on Flickr<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With time it becomes clear that in the face of the threat of ambitious development, we must not become too galvanized in our zeal to preserve the past\u2013 we must, case by case, examine what we truly value in it. AFAM is a great example\u2013 we are so passionate about keeping the whole building untouched, as if we value each and every part of it equally. But this is of course not true. We (the architectural community, the rest of the city\u2019s inhabitants, visitors, even history) far and away have assigned the greatest value to the facade. And deservedly so. But that means that we should allocate our preservation efforts accordingly. Here, there is an almost perfect opportunity for using facadism positively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DS+R\u2019s work clearly grapples with the limits of demolition. At what point does the building lose its architectural integrity and just become a mangled ruin, or a bunch of scattered fragments? Such a limit is real without a doubt, however there\u2019s nothing to prevent an inventive architect from reinvigorating what\u2019s left with something new. This is what all urban infill projects are about. If we only griped about what would be lost, we would never get to enjoy the prospect of something new. But if Liz Diller is correct about AFAM\u2019s obdurateness, we have a bit of a contradiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nicoilai Ourousoff: pensive face.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Nicolai Ourousoff: happy face.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AFAM\u2019s resistance to change is considered a strength and a virtue (~46:00), a sign of its perfection as a finished work with a particular program on a particular site built at a particular time. But how can that be praised when the very institution proposing its demolition has undergone so many changes in the last 100 years? Change, of course, is one of the tenets of Modernism. DS+R asked the right question in \u201cIs Modernism a done deal?\u201d But strangely the the question wasn\u2019t asked of the museum itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modernism, despite its forward-looking spirit, is becoming dated. With the advent of what Jeremy Rifkin calls the Third Industrial Revolution, Modernism, indebted and parallel to the Second Industrial Revolution (assembly lines, automobiles, electricity\u2026) has entered its\u00a0end game<\/em>. At what point, if at all, does MoMA decide to comply and close the package of \u2018modern art\u2019 and begin the phase of archiving and enshrinement (which again demands confrontation of the limits of preservation)? It\u2019s an inevitable step in any movement or period, something society has an instinct for. What will happen to the AFAM collection? Has MoMA deemed it unworthy of enshrinement? Who are they to determine that, given the institutions\u2019 mismatching mission statements (vernacular vs. contemporary, craft vs. product)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways this simply shows the current state of museums: global superpowers wielding deadly developing power\u2013 in a city as cramped as NYC it should come as no surprise that an enormous museum will expand into someone else\u2019s territory\u2013 eventually a parcel of territory will come across whose value surpasses promises of the future with past achievements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Enshrined at MoMA: Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. Photo by Wikipedia Loves Art participant “trish”. Found on Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY 2.5<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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American Folk Art Museum. Exhibition titled Memory Palaces: Inside the Collection of Audrey B. Heckler. September 17, 2019\u2013January 26, 2020. Photo by london road. Found on Flickr<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY 2.0<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But this split happened prior to these present issues and discussions– the mad irony in all this is that AFAM had to sell the building in 2011<\/a> to relieve itself of debt– debt from loans taken out in order to get it built. The present state of affairs should have been foreseen even then. Oddly enough, AFAM may have been the perpetrator of its own demise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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American Folk Art Museum. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Archiects. Photo by no_typographic_man. Found on Flickr<\/a>. Shared via Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>. No changes made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To those who haven\u2019t watched it,\u00a0this video\u00a0gives some good insight into the players behind the MoMA expansion, and some good counter-arguments from the panel. Times are tough at DS+R, their feet are in some muck. Liz Diller\u2019s presentation comes across as stilted and uninventive, which is strange coming from a firm that has successfully championed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[190,191,193,194,187,192,195],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","tag-diller-scofidio-renfro","tag-facadism","tag-folk-art-museum","tag-jorge-otero-pailos","tag-moma","tag-preservation","tag-stephen-rustow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1570,"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/1570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivanhimanen.com\/crisesofdocumentation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}