When I was in high school, I went with some schoolmates to Paris, France, for two weeks. It was a school thing, supervised by one of the more fun French teachers, and I had a really good time. One of my big regrets was The Louvre. You see, the line was like four hours long, so I didn’t go into the most famous art museum in the world. However, I did see the outside, and the famous glass pyramid, and that was good enough for me. Sometimes the outside of the art museum is more interesting than what’s inside, as this image gallery from Web Urbanist proves.
I do all that talking about the Louvre and don’t even use a picture of it. Above is the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pretty awesome, huh?
It’s interesting to me that in my lifetime museums have gone from being housed in whatever old buildings just standing around unused to works of art themselves. As it should be, in my opinion. (Not that anyone cares about my opinion.) Art is a living thing and should be housed in appropriate venues for it. A museum of modern art needs a cool modern art building, not a concrete bunker.
Although, housing art in an old concrete bunker would be a pretty good gimmick for an edgier art institute. They could advertise it as art too dangerous for the normal museum or something.
Tags: museums, architecture, weisman art museum, buildings, unusual buildings, unusual architecture, buildings as art