wordcrush

The New York Times is running a great piece (RR) on the new Parrish Art Museum that is slated to open in 2009 in Southampton, NY. For you uncultured slugs like me, Southampton is the rural area where the likes of Pollock, Lichtenstein, de Kooning, and Krasner have been drawn to over the years. The new architectural commision was necessary because "the museum had outgrown its current building, an 1898 brick structure that lacks sufficient space for major exhibitions, storage and educational activities."

What strikes me so much about the NYT article (and the design itself) is the way it carefully articulates the new space in relation to the locale: "The architects’ response to the 14-acre site in Water Mill was to spread about 30 modest, low-slung buildings over the area, sandwiched between the Montauk Highway and the Long Island Rail Road tracks. With their varying shapes, angular roofs and local vegetation, the buildings look to be growing out of the ground."

To arrive at this plan, the winning architectural firm, Herzog and de Meuron (of Tate Modern fame), studied both the artistic spaces of previous residents and consulted with current artists residing there: "They observed how artists created their studios in former farm buildings, sheds and shacks and oriented those spaces around the northern light." The results are dazzling, and they raise questions of how un-arbitrary visial signifers can really be.

# posted by Lintropy @ 11:32 AM