It feels like a dream now, but there was a time not so long ago that the Cincinnati Art Museum had plans for a new cutting-edge contemporary addition to its campus.
The now-departed Aaron Betsky, who himself had a master’s degree in architecture from Yale, became the museum’s director in 2006 partly to shepherd that to fruition. By 2007, Betsky had chosen the Rotterdam firm of Neutelings Riedijk Architects for what he told The New York Times in 2009 was to have been a $45 million, 60,000-square-foot expansion, followed by a renovation of existing buildings. The overall cost was estimated by media to be $125 to $150 million.
The Great Recession of 2008 has indefinitely delayed that (although smaller renovations of existing museum space have gone forward), as has the fact that arts donors were also being asked by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to support a major renovation of Music Hall — a project finally occurring after years of fundraising.
But you can see some new art museum additions in this region — and witness the lift they are providing their institutions and communities — if you’re willing to take short drives to Columbus and Louisville.
COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART
480 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio, columbusmuseum.org // Approximate Drive Time: 2 hours
The Margaret M. Walter Wing of the Columbus Museum of Art opened last October and is now getting ready for its first summer. Part of a $37.6 million project that also included renovations, it’s an attractive but not radically startling two-story wing that oddly reminds me of an old-fashioned photo-slide viewer made monumental by Claes Oldenburg (and placed atop an open, mostly glass base). It’s classically Modernist but also has a little bit of a fun Pop attitude to it.
The architect was Michael Bongiorno of the Columbus DesignGroup firm, and it’s nice to see a local firm get such a prestigious project. (The original choice was the national New York City-based firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.)
The new wing, which is to the west of the 1931 Renaissance Revival main building, has one spectacular second-floor gallery with south-facing windows overlooking the front lawn and Broad Street. That room is home to several nicely sited Contemporary works — Deborah Butterfield’s “Joseph” horse sculpture, Frank Stella’s “The Garden Witch” and a small abstract painting by Lorser Feitelson called “Magical Space Forms.”
But the dominant piece here is Antony Gormley’s “Free Fall,” an almost floor-to-ceiling sphere made of stainless steel and hung from above. Seen from a distance, either inside the gallery or from outside, it’s like some type of giant, rolling metal tumbleweed or a big beach ball’s armature. Up close, it’s more like a spider’s web — a reminder that an art museum is no place for cobwebs, literally or metaphorically.
While the new wing beefs up the museum’s Contemporary collections and also provides room for temporary exhibitions, it’s worth the time to look at the older collection in the main building.
I find much to think about the museum’s pre-World War II American art, work that is generally considered too regionalist and isolationist to be interesting today beyond Edward Hopper. But Reginald Marsh’s 1940 watercolor “Mad Men of Europe” is fascinating. The title comes from a depicted marquee placard at a bustling movie theater, but it’s really a commentary by the Social Realist artist about a larger world gone wrong as Americans try to stay entertained.
Incidentally, please allow time to go to the bathroom in the new wing — even if you don’t need to. The Dyson company has donated 15 Airblade Tap hand dryers that are integrated with the faucets so you don’t need to move your hands from the washer to the dryer.
They look like small, sleek models of jet planes. You may have to wait in line to use one, however. They’ve become a museum attraction in and of themselves.
SPEED ART MUSEUM
2035 S. Third St., Louisville, Ky., speedmuseum.org // Approximate Drive Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Louisville’s
Speed Art Museum closed in 2012 to begin a $60 million expansion and renovation of its existing 1927 building and later additions. Designed by Kulapat Yantrasast, the Thai-born founding partner of wHY, a progressive-thinking Los Angeles-based architectural firm (Louisville’s K. Norman Berry Associates served as a local partner), it reopened in March with a 30-hour continuous celebration. The museum now had a much zippier presence and urban footprint to go with its name.
The 62,500-square-foot new building doubles the overall space and triples gallery areas. With its glass exterior, it conveys transparency and offers space for Contemporary art, temporary exhibitions, a welcome center, café, a Grand Hall and a cinema programmed by a full-time film curator.
So far, the cinema has been offering true art movies — sophisticated foreign narrative films and major documentaries about the visual arts. For the rest of May and June, those include
The First Monday in May , about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s high-fashion Met Gala; Terence Davies’
Sunset Song ;
Cemetery of Splendor by award-winning Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul; the
Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour ; the French movie
Marguerite ; and
Francofonia , Russian director Alexander Sokurov’s essayist look at the Louvre. A major July event is a restored, 35-millimeter version of the acclaimed 1973 Japanese animated film,
Belladonna of Sadness .
OHIO HISTORY CENTER’S LUSTRON HOUSE
800 E. 17th Ave., Columbus, Ohio, ohiohistory.org // Approximate Drive Time: 2 hours
While Columbus and Louisville can offer us examples of what 21st-century art museums want to look like, an exhibit at Columbus’ Ohio History Center reminds us of what some once thought the future of American homebuilding would become.
It was right after World War II, and returning veterans and their young families wanted to live in a new, modern country with new, modern things — unlike the drab, cramped one that had suffered through the Great Depression and the homeland shortages of the war years.
A Columbus company, the Lustron Corporation, wanted to bring that future about by manufacturing and selling porcelain-enameled steel homes that could be delivered on tractor-trailers to buyers wherever they had available lots. These Lustron homes were promoted as “Tomorrow’s Home Today.” They packed a lot of shiny features into their square footage, which could vary from 713 to 1,140, according to Wikipedia.
Though the Lustron Revolution didn’t work out as planned (despite homes being available in four colors), a full-scale Lustron home is on display until 2018 at the Ohio History Center, where it was assembled and given period furniture and decorations.
It’s positively spectacular with its built-in metal dining cabinet, sliding metal doors to the clothes closet in the bedroom, the combination washing machine-dishwasher and the notes applied to the metal walls via magnets. Is it too late for a revival? ©
This article appears in May 18-25, 2016.