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“What we don’t know, however, and won’t know for a while, is whether the galleries strike the right balance between the need to move crowds and the stillness required for contemplating art.”

You already know that the in vitro guy won the first Nobel of the season (The first Nobel, the angels did say…); you might not know that Zaha Hadid has won the Stirling for her contemporary art museum in Rome.

The quotation in my title comes from Nicolai Ouroussoff, who wrote about the project last November for the New York Times. Although enthusiastic, Ouroussoff worried about the “relentless” “flow of spaces,” and this YouTube (mute the music if it’s not your thing) indeed suggests a problem.

Or maybe not. If the idea of the museum is to convey the idea of contemporaneity, then the fact that Hadid’s building looks and probably feels like an airport makes sense. The postmodern sensibility is distinctly not about stillness, and few contemporary art pieces (certainly not, say, kinetic or performance art) demand the rapt, silent, extended consideration that earlier twentieth century artworks, with their challenging abstractions and collages, for instance, seemed to call for. How much contemplation time are you going to give Barbara Kruger’s I Shop Therefore I Am?

You’re going to enter that museum hopped up, ready to be distracted, amused, and bopped around by its endless hallways and elevators and stairs. You’ll poke your head into this narrow gallery and that, but your main thing will be restless bouncing around.

Margaret Soltan, October 4, 2010 11:18AM
Posted in: it's art

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3 Responses to ““What we don’t know, however, and won’t know for a while, is whether the galleries strike the right balance between the need to move crowds and the stillness required for contemplating art.””

  1. Michael Tinkler Says:
    October 4th, 2010 at 5:19PM

    I’m headed back to Rome for the spring semester – I’ll let you know what I think.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    October 4th, 2010 at 6:26PM

    Lucky you, Michael. Enjoy. And report back on the Hadid museum.

  3. University Diaries » Zaha Hadid, a Great Architect, Has Died. Says:
    March 31st, 2016 at 1:52PM

    […] There will be plenty of commentary on her difficult work and personality. UD posted about one of her buildings here. […]

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