OPINIONS ON MUSEUMS AND PUBLIC ART
BY D. JEFFREY MIMS
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Comments and images of public art are welcome by email,
and may be posted on this page.
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Though the art museum as a public institution is a fairly recent development in civic life, public art has been
with us since the earliest historic civilizations. Long before the Greeks established their unparalleld model for Western art, painting and sculpture were engaged
as a civilizing influence in all cultures.
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In Florence, Italy, birthplace of the Renaissance and cradle of education for many students pursuing classical traditions,
the approach to the Uffizi Gallery is an artistic experience in itself. From the design of the piazza to the surrounding architecture accented with sculpture, the
visitor is prepared to experience the treasures exhibited inside this celebrated museum. |
Entrance to the Uffizi Gallery
Florence, Italy |
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Renowned as one of the most beautiful cities in the New World, Savannah, Georgia is home to the Telfair Museum, the
oldest public art museum in the South. The Telfair family home opened as a public art museum and school in 1886, and sets a quietly majestic example for an art
center through its location, architecture, and sculpture working in concert to identify its role as an institution to train and inspire artists.*
The statues portray the Greek sculptor Phidias flanked by the immortal Renaissance artists Raphael and Michelangelo. |
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| Telfair Museum of Art
Savannah, GA |
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In contrast to the above examples, the North Carolina Museum of Art, housing a marvelous collection of Renaissance
and Baroque painting, greets the visitor with a building whose appearance could be confused with an insecticide factory. It is not without the obligatory three dimensional object that Tom Wolfe
identified more accurately in his famous phrase - requoted
recently by Prince Charles to describe similar arrangements. |
North Carolina Museum of Art
Raleigh, NC |
| A very similiar effect is exhibited in this photograph. Though the focus of this building is commercial rather
than artistic, the identifying aesthetics are strikingly similiar to the previous photograph. |
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| A Building Supply Company
Anywhere, USA
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*Sadly, the Telfair Museum is constructing a new $24 million "state-of-the-art" Jepson Center which
promises to be "Savannah's latest landmark building." Like so many civic and university museum additions, this project
is almost certainly guaranteed to be disconnected from the visual character and spiritual purpose of the original institution. |
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