This month's museum pick...
By Totty Posted on History
 We thought we could defy the canon and name 10 (or so) of the greatest
museums in the world without mentioning at least one of the museums
listed below.
However, we are but a tiny tail on the Great Dog of Culture. We’ll
happily let somebody else establish a new Top 10 (or so). For now, we’re
content to say what we like about the current list.
►
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
► British
Museum, London
►
The Vatican Museums, Rome
► The Prado,
Madrid
► The
Hermitage, St. Petersburg
► The
Smithsonian, Washington, DC
► MoMA (Museum of
Modern Art), New York City
► The Ufizzi,
Florence
►
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
► The Tates,
London
►
The
Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
Metropolitan Museum of Art,New
York City
 Yes, The Getty has a far larger endowment and other museums have had
more notable architects (the Kimbell’s Kahn, the Bilbao Guggenheim’s
Gehry, the New York Guggenheim’s Lloyd Wright, etc.), but the Met is the
quintessential municipal museum. That it is the local museum for the
most powerful city on the planet gives it a cachet no other museum,
however well funded, can match.
What else
we like about it: Sheesh, it’s in
New York. If you exhaust yourself on the Met, go play with
the Guggenheim, MoMA, the Frick Collection, Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney
Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the Cloisters,
Cooper-Hewitt
British
Museum, London
.jpg) Oh, for the age of British Imperialism.
You could just cart away national treasures, like the Elgin Marbles or
the Rosetta Stone, without paying pesky fees. The result: 7 million
artifacts (4 million on display). 6 million visitors per year and 30
miles of corridors. The greatest collection of Egyptiana outside of
Egypt. You can even sleep there. Maybe best of all, the immense domed grandeur of The Great Reading Room is now open to the public.
What else
we like about it: It’s in London:
Great Indian food, that gigantic Ferris wheel, the Tates (old and new),
a chance to glimpse Elizabeth Regina II, still surprisingly apple-cheeked
after 50 years on that hard oaken throne.
The
Vatican Museums, Rome
 People who clamor for the Vatican to sell
its art treasures and give the money to the poor never say to whom the
art should be sold. Nor do they acknowledge the incredibly steep
admission price the new owners would be bound to charge people to view
art that was once free for all to see. Until those heady questions are
answered (don’t worry, they won’t be), we’ll just have to traipse to
Rome and subject ourselves to walking around St. Peter’s and environs.
What to see here? Twenty-two separate
collections, ranging from Egyptian and Etruscan art to maps and modern
religious art. The pinnacles, of course, are the Sistine Chapel and
Raphael’s rooms and loggias. In the basilica, there’s the Piéta, well
repaired after madman Lazlo Toth’s 1971 assault, but now behind a
transparent barrier. Bernini’s spiral columns over the great altar and
Michelangelo’s massive dome still draw gasps.
What else
we like about it: The architecture
and art of the Vatican bespeak a grander humanism than many of
Catholicism’s critics will acknowledge. The Renaissance reached a peak
of artistic expression here, and the Church sponsored and inspired it.
The
Prado, Madrid
 The
Welsh travel writer Jan Morris once said that the hallmark of the
Spanish was that everyone among them, from hidalgo to impoverished
commoner, had a natural dignity and gravity that no other nationality
could duplicate. The Prado partakes of that national characteristic by
managing to assert its presence in most anybody’s Top 10 list despite
the relative thinness of its collections compared to other museums on
the roster.
Where it is strong, it is front-rank:
Spanish art has its greatest redoubt here, with Goya, Velasquez, El
Greco, Murillo and other notables well represented. The museum’s
neo-classical façade augments the city’s considerable collection of 18th-century
architecture, including the opulent Royal Palace.
What else
we like about it: Madrid under
Franco was a hot, dour, uptight place. Now it’s a hot, energetic,
hang-loose place that’s enjoying all the attention Franco denied it over
his 36-year reign. The Prado is the serious excuse fun-lovers can pull
out if somebody says their visit to Madrid is becoming too frivolous.
The
Hermitage, St. Petersburg
The Bolsheviks, who hated or envied just
about everything and everybody, especially detested the tsars. Tyrants
like Peter, Nicholas, Catherine and Elizabeth had a habit of looking
west and importing everything from ideas and architecture to art and
Faberge eggs. The existence of those riches was traumatic for low-brow
Leninists (the high-brow ones either sold them off or stole them for
personal use), but good for the rest of us: The Hermitage remains one of
the richest collections in the world, and the greatest museum in Russia.
Over three centuries, the Hermitage
acquired a stunning span of art, all the more impressive because of
Russia’s isolation relative to the great art centers of Europe. In its
Western European Art section alone, the museum covers English, French,
Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and German art, and sprawls over 120
rooms.
What else we
like about it:
St. Petersburg is Russia’s crown jewel. A devastating siege by the Nazis
in WWII and 70-plus years neglect by the Soviets were not enough to
destroy the beauty of this great canalled city. With its bright
Italianate colors, neo-classical and Georgian architecture, and dazzling
summer light, this city is the golden gateway that beckons travelers
into Russia.
The
Smithsonian, Washington, DC
 Had the feral ignoramuses who attacked
the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 understood the U.S.
a bit more, they might have considered attacking this great museum. For
it is here that the physical basis of some of this country’s most
important memories are lovingly stored – everything from Charles
Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis monoplane to the contents of
Lincoln’s pockets on the night he was assassinated.
Beware, though: There’s so much here it
invites insanity. When dealing with the Smithsonian, it’s best to select
a theme and stick to it. Firmly resist the temptation to indulge your
wandering eye. Do as Ulysses did and lash yourself to a figurative mast
that forces you to stay focused.
What else
we like about it: I. M. Pei’s
gorgeous National Art Gallery – modernism at its best. It’s close to
some fine monuments, especially Maya Lin’s sublimely perfect and
appropriate Vietnam War memorial (avoid the politically correct FDR monument,
which has him sans cigarette and constrained in a wheelchair; it is
tacky beyond belief).
The
Louvre, Paris
 Art
will out, even over national rivalries. Many French were not pleased
when an American, I.M. Pei, won the 1985 commission to redesign this
venerable, but dark and cramped, palace-museum and bring it into the
modern era. They were even more astonished when Pei proposed digging up
the museum’s great plaza to make more exhibition space, covering over
the new space with a restored plaza and then capping the whole thing
with a glass pyramid. Sacre bleu!, such an intrusive shape for
the venerable museum.
But the more they thought about it, the
more Pei’s deceptively simple form made sense. The pyramid would serve
as both an new entrance and a skylight that would flood the expanded
space with sunshine. It showed respect for the fine old buildings
around it by tapering and then vanishing at its topmost point, as though
to say, “I’m just the emcee, you guys are the real stars.”
So, these days the French are proud of
the Louvre in a new way. The old way was, “We have one of the grandest
old ladies in Europe. We know she’s looking threadbare, but sit up and
pay respect.” The new way: “Hey, have I introduced you yet to my new amante?”
What
else we like about it:
The Mona Lisa, Paris, the Musée d’Orsay, the Centre
Pompidou; down the highways, Burgundy and Champagne, Provence and the
Languedoc. C’mon, don’t drag it out of us.
MoMA,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York City
 Cesar Pelli’s sleek 53rd St. tower soars above the base of
this museum with a clean, simple, repetitive geometric pattern to its
skin that’s plainly in keeping with the spirit of the art it represents.
This is a museum that has never shied
away from keeping current, architecturally or conceptually, with its
subject matter. Although it was the pre-WWII Europeans who pioneered the creation
of modern art, it was the Americans who quickly realized the art’s
significance and moved to embrace and preserve it. Thanks to MoMA, New
York City emerged after WWII as the world’s center of art.
What else
we like about it: Now undergoing a
massive refurbishment and the addition of a new education and research
center, MoMA recently picked up its collection and toted it to a former
factory in Queens. Voila, “MoMA QNS.” It’s a move that pays a wonderful
compliment to the city’s workaday folks by bringing the world’s greatest
collection of modern art straight to people who can’t always make the
trip to 53rd St.
The
Uffizi, Florence
 North
American visitors on their first visit to Florence are astounded by the
sheer casualness with which the Florentines strew about great art. As
they head through the Piazza della Signoria toward the Uffizi, they’re
shocked to see such marvels as Cellini’s Perseus holding up the
head of Medusa and Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines lined up
under the Loggia dei Lanzi, open to the air. “If this is what these
people leave outside,” they ask themselves, “what the hell do they put
indoors?”
What is indoors, in what used to be the
Florentine city-state’s suite of municipal offices, is one of the finest
collections of paintings and sculptures on earth. The casual
extravagance, which it seems Florentines enjoy more than the citizens of
any other city when it comes to art, continues here. The Uffizi boasts
works by Carvaggio, Van Dyck, Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Brueghel,
Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Goya, El Greco, Rubens, and dozens more
Renaissance artists.
What else
we like about it: An American
woman in Florence for the first time turned a corner and entered the
Piazza della Signoria. Stunned by its beauty, she sought distraction in
a gelateria, where she bought a cup of coffee gelato. Stepping back into
the piazza, she took another look at the view, then took a taste of her
gelato, which, she later said, was the best ice cream she’d ever tasted.
After the taste, she slumped against a 500-year-old building and
whimpered, “Take me now, Lord.”
We quite
understand.
Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris
 OK,
so the organs-on-the-outside exoskeleton design is so ‘70s. This
is still a gutsy landmark building that’s incredibly friendly to art.
Once you’re past the frantic exterior, there’s nothing on the inside to
compete with the exhibits.
Inside, of course, is France’s premier
collection of modern and industrial art. The modern art collection is
divided between “The Moderns,” artists from 1905 to 1960, and “The
Contemporaries,” artists from 1960 on. The distinction is a good one,
allowing the museum to signal guests that “modern” art began to change
dramatically in the 1960s.
What else
we like about it: This building
brought prestige and life to a scruffy neighborhood, Beaubourg.
Just as the Tate’s new annex on the south bank of the Thames is reviving
an old industrial neighborhood, the Centre Pompidou is proof of the
power of distinctive architecture and art to transform cities.
The
Tates, London
 Three
years ago, the Tate, Britain’s national art museum, wisely spun off its
modern art collection and sent it packing to new digs in the restored
Bankside Power Station on the south bank of
the Thames. In doing so, the Tate, located just southwest of the Houses
of Parliament, gave some breathing room to its collection of British
art, the most extensive in the world. Now called Tate Britain, its
transfer of art to the Tate Modern at Bankside allowed its burgeoning
international modern art collection to find a home that will not run out
of exhibition space for several lifetimes.
What else
we like about them: You have to
hand it to anybody who can take a hulk like the Bankside Power Station
and actually tame the beast and make it into an awesome display space.
Between the art and the sheer vastness of the converted building,
there’s much to entertain the eye.
The
Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
 We’re placing this museum on this list
for two reasons: Its Guggenheim pedigree and its architecture. This is
the most significant museum design of the late 20th century,
if only because it busted the genre out of the habit of looking so
solemn, as though museums are replacements for churches (which, for many
people, they are). Bilbao was a moldering regional backwater until it
made a leap of faith and accepted Frank Gehry’s design for a
titanium-clad museum that looks like a fourth-dimensional origami. As
with the Pompidou and the Louvre in Paris, Gehry’s design is so
distinctive that anybody who sees it immediately knows what and where it
is.
Alas, Gehry is now beginning to parody
himself by outputting a bunch of similar designs that look like exploded
tin cans. Ten years from now, when it will be obvious to all that his
BMP museum in Seattle and his upcoming Los Angeles symphony concert hall
are failed experiments in urban trendiness, his Bilbao opus will still
be drawing raves.
What else we
like about it:
Northern Spain gets passed over by a lot of people who think that the
rectangle created by Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Granada is a
good-enough cross-section of the country. Bilbao, with its heavy Basque
presence, is gateway to a whole northern tier of Spanish provinces that
are surprisingly green and climactically mild, and have a rich underlay
of Celtic and other non-Castilian traditions.
Keywords: Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, The Vatican Museums, The Prado, The Hermitage, The Smithsonian, Museum of Modern Art, The Ufizzi, Centre Georges Pompidou, The Tates, The Guggenheim
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