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Wright in Racine
A new look at the Guggenheim Museum
Posted by:
mhertzberg on
September 19, 2010 at
12:49AM CST
Text and photos (c) Mark Hertzberg There are two Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim museums in New York City: the one Wright envisioned, and the one completed after his death in April, 1959. That is the thesis of Neil Levine’s history of the museum in a new DVD from Tim Sakomoto and his in-D media, LLC production company. Sakamoto combines a provocative and engaging documentary and interview with Levine with an interactive tour of the museum in his Deluxe two-disc DVD, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum” (the Standard edition has only one disc, the 85-minute interview). Levine’s history of the museum is richly illustrated. Sakomoto skillfully weaves together archival photos in a variety of collages in the film. The interview is accompanied by a fine original jazz score by Joshua Sklair. Levine articulates thoughts you may already have had about the museum. If you are not familiar with the Guggenehim, he makes a compelling case for you to plan a visit. The museum is important, says Levine, not only because it is a great design by Wright, but also because it set a new standard for how museums could be designed. Levine says that the museum had “its greatest impact” in “its social aspect,” setting the stage for Renzo Piano’s Pompidou Center in Paris (1971) and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (completed in 1997), among others. Neil Levine - photo courtesy of Tim Sakamoto
In spite of its impact, the museum falls short of what it could have, or should have, been, says Levine. “Fallingwater is what Wright designed. In the Guggenheim, the color is bad, the surfaces are bad, the light is bad. It was not finished by Frank Lloyd Wright...To me it is not a sensuous experience. I have tried. It’s not developed.” says Levine. “The building became in my view less than if it had been built as originally designed.” Levine contrasts what is known as one of Wright’s most famous buildings with what could have been a significantly greater building had the architect been able to realize his vision, “The surfaces at Fallingwater have meaning. in the Guggenheim, the surfaces are dead. That’s the problem. That’s a real problem. Whether that’s the fault of Taliesin, or whether it’s the budget and whether Wright would not have been able to do better, I don’t know.” The museum’s walls are white, not the natural beige Wright proposed. Wright’s design called for “bands of light,” clerestory windows ringing each ramp, bringing in “natural light to softly illuminate the paintings.” The proposed window spaces were filled in, and artificial light was added instead.
Photo courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum Wright’s Pyrex-glass tube elevator was not executed, nor was his design for a Pyrex-glass tube dome modeled after the one in his 1943 design for the addition to the SC Johnson Administration Building (built concurrently with his SCJ Research Tower) . Paintings project from the walls on rods, rather than hanging on the walls themselves, “the art is dissociated from the structure.”
The SC Johnson dome
Levine continues, “I think one of the most interesting things about the Guggenheim Museum is the dichotomy between what was intended to be and what it ended up being, and the fact that Wright as an architect was able, despite being prevented from doing so many of the things he wanted to do and despite the program having changed, still able to preserve the fundamental idea of the building. “Wright saw the building not as a composition of rooms, or spaces in which works of art would be placed on the wall in a traditional manner, but, rather, as one single space that would be continuous from the top down to the ground through this gallery ramp. And the interesting thing there is that the building has to be understood as a total unit in which no longer was the circulation system separate from the installation space, but that the circulation system and the installation space were one continuous space." Still, says Levine, the building is a tour-de-force. The interior and exterior of the building are intertwined. The base-band which Wright had proposed below the paintings would reflect light from the intended ribbon windows, provide a physical security barrier between viewer and art, and visual continuity to the ramps. “The concept of total unity extended to the entire building in Wright’s thinking.” An eighty-five minute talking-head interview could be tiresome to watch. This one is not. Levine is in conversation with the viewer. The piece is generally thoughtfully edited by Francois Maurin with Sakomoto’s contemporary video of the museum (shot during the 2009 Wright exhibition) and archival photos and plans.The conversation with Levine could have been edited more tightly in several respects, both of which shift the focus away from the museum. There is repetitive footage of Levine looking at the exhibition, sometimes in slow motion. He is wearing a dark suit - in contrast to the casual clothes he wears during his conversation with us about the museum. One such clip would be fine to set the scene of Levine knowing the building first-hand, rather than merely talking about it in his living room. It becomes visual filler through its repetition, rather than adding to our understanding of the museum. Second, there are two segments in which Levine tells us how he was first exposed to Wright’s work, and in which he explains how he looks at buildings. They would be more pertinent in a piece about Levine and his scholarship; they are off-topic here. The deluxe edition is worth spending $10 more for, even if one has visited the museum often, for the visuals. They are a fine addition to a Wright library. Sakamoto's DVDs (this is not his first Wright piece) show us Wright's work in a way that no book can. Viewers are treated to 360-degree panoramic views of the building on every floor, and outside, as well as to a collection of Wright’s drawings of the museum and a variety of still photos inside and outside the museum. One can easily zoom into small sections of the drawings and still photos and see them in very good detail (you can easily recognize yourself if Sakamoto was taking pictures as you were looking at the exhibition or having a bite to eat in the museum cafeteria). The question of whether a Wright design is still a Wright design if his vision was altered during or after construction, is not a new subject of debate. There is no definitive answer. Indeed, one of the themes of the upcoming meeting of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy is additions to Wright commissions, including the Guggenheim. A limited number of copies of the DVD will be for sale there. Levine’s discussion of the museum in this context is timely, coming after the 50th anniversary of the building, an anniversary marked by a major Wright exhibition there last year (“Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward”), and a history of the museum, co-authored by Levine, and published by the Guggenheim (“The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum” by Hilary Ballon, Luis Carranza, Pat Kirkham, and Neil Levine).
Tim Sakamoto at SC Johnson, Ferbuary, 2008
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