Museums in the 21st Century

Louisiana was in many ways a source of inspiration for the museum concept of the late twentieth century, in terms of architecture as well as other features. With this exhibition, in connection with Louisiana’s fiftieth anniversary in 2008, the museum takes the pulse of the latest developments in museum architecture.

The exhibition is a kind of scatter-diagram overview of what is happening right now in the field of museum architecture and shows a great number of the world’s most important current and future museum projects.

Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts Projects Buildings

Why has the building of museums all over the world taken on the character of prestige projects? Which tendencies in museum architecture are the most important right now? Where are the museums heading in the coming decades? These are some of the themes that the exhibition Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts Projects Buildings attempts to illustrate by presenting a great number of the world’s ongoing or future museum projects – as told through staged assemblages and models, photographs, films, animations and other visual media.

Museum-building is in more than one sense an expression of the wealth of our society, just as centuries-old palaces and cathedrals testify to the finest that our culture has to offer. Today museum-building has gained a particularly prominent status, as the exhibition shows by presenting an overview of some of the most important projects from the best international architectural offices active at present. North America and Europe are still in the grip of a veritable building boom in the museum area; China and other parts of Asia are on their way; and museum architecture is often used to give visibility to organizations, cities, regions or countries.

The exhibition will consist of three sections: the first is about the idea of the museum viewed historically until the present day, including a segment about Louisiana as a model and source of inspiration for the museum concept of the 21st century with its point of departure in the French architect Jean Nouvel’s “Louisiana Manifesto” – a tribute to Louisiana as the epitome of site-specific museum architecture where buildings, landscape and art merge.

This is followed by a second section which is an existing exhibition, conceptualized by and organized in collaboration with Art Centre Basel, Switzerland about museums in the 21st century, covering 27 museums, as well as a virtual archive of the 50 most important museums today.

Finally, in a third section that looks ahead in time, the exhibition at Louisiana shows examples of visionary projects for 21st-century museum construction, developed by the Japanese architect group SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) with their two latest museums: the New Museum in New York and the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan.

The introductory and concluding sections of the exhibition have been produced by curator Kjeld Kjeldsen, Louisiana.

Humlebæk, 12 March 2008

projects:

- Anamorphosis Architects: Museum of the Hellenic World, Athens, Greece - Ando, Tadao: Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan - Aoki, Jun: Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori, Aomori Prefecture, Japan - atelier brückner, ART+COM: New conception of the BMW museum, Munich, Germany - Ban, Shigeru / de Gastines, Jean: Centre Pompidou Metz, Metz, Lothringen, France - Botta, Mario, MART: Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy - Braunfels, Stephan: Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany - Chipperfield, David: Museumsinsel Berlin (Masterplan), Berlin, Germany 1. David Chipperfield Eingangsgebäude und Archäologische Promenade 2. David Chipperfield Neues Museum 3. Hilmer & Sattler und Albrecht Altes Museum 4. H.G. Merz Alte Nationalgalerie 5. Heinz Tesar Bodemuseum 6. Oswald Mathias Ungers Pergamonmuseum - Cloepfil, Brad / Allied Works Architecture: University of Michigan Art Museum, Ann Arbor MI, USA - Coop Himmelb(l)au: Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France - Denton Corker Marshall Group: Stonehenge Visitor Centre and Interpretive Museum, Wiltshire, UK - Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Eyebeam, New York, NY, USA - Gehry, Frank O.: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA - Gigon, Annette / Guyer, Mike: Varusschlacht im Osnabrücker Land GmbH, Museum und Park Kalkriese, Bramsche-Kalkriese, Germany - Hadid, Zaha: MAXXI - Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Rome, Italy - Holl, Steven: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art expansion, Kansas City, MO, USA - Kurokawa, Kisho: The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan - Libeskind, Daniel: Extension of the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, USA - Maki, Fumihiko: Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo, Shimane, Japan - Nouvel, Jean: Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France - Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland - Spacelab, Peter Cook / Colin Fournier: Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria - Taniguchi and Associates: Expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA - Tschumi, Bernard: The New Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece - UN Studio, Ben van Berkel / Caroline Bos: Mercedes Benz Museum, Stuttgart, Germany - Viñoly, Rafael: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, USA - Wood / Marsh Pty Ltd. Architecture: ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

www.artcentrebasel.com

Museums in the 21st Century
The Boundaries of Architecture I
An Art Centre Basel production
Idee und Konzept: Suzanne Greub & Thierry Greub
Realisation: Christine Gisi

Architekten: Allied Works Architectur (Brad Cloepfil), Thomas Albrecht, Anamorphosis Architects, Tadao Ando, Jun Aoki, atelier brückner, ART+COM, Shigero Ban / Jean de Gastines, Mario Botta, Stephan Braunfels, David Chipperfield, Brad Cloepfil / Allied Works Architecture , Coop Himmelb(l)au, Denton Corker Marshall Group, Diller & Scofidio + Renfro, Frank O. Gehry, Gigon / Guyer, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Kisho Kurokawa, Daniel Libeskind, Fumihiko Maki, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Spacelab  / Peter Cook / Colin Fournier, Planungsgruppe Museumsinsel ( David Chipperfield, Hilmer & Sattler und Albrecht, Heinz Tesar, Oswald Mathias Ungers, Levin Monsigny), Yoshio Taniguchi, Bernard Tschumi, UN Studio (Ben van Berkel / Caroline Bos), Rafael Vinoly, Wood / Marsh Pty Ltd. Architecture (Roger Wood / Randal Marsh) ...

Stationen:
01.04.06 - 25.06.06 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf
21.09.06 - 29.10.06 MAXXI, Rom
24.11.06 - 19.02.07 Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
20.03.07 - 17.06.07 Musée des Confluences, Lyon
13.07.07 - 07.10.07 Mart Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto
02.11.07 - 03.02.08 Caixa Geral de Depósitos Culturgest Lisboa, Lissabon
29.02.08 - 25.05.08 Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz, Berlin
20.06.08 - 14.09.08 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek
10.10.08 - 11.01.09 National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo
06.02.09 - 03.05.09 UMMA Ann Arbor - University of Michigan, USA
29.05.09 - 23.08.09 FRIST Nashville / Tennesee, USA
14.05.10 - 22.08.10 Neues BMW Museum, München