Art houses must be places of sense, sensibility

Abu Dhabi: Museum buildings are no longer treasure boxes, the wrapping of a beautiful content. Whenever a new one is built, the architectural design of the building takes into consideration a lot more than just secure walls and proper lighting.

What museums should be like was the question posed to three personalities, a world renown architect, a famous artist and a well experienced curator in the first panel discussion that opened the Abu Dhabi Art fair (ADA), which ended on November 8 at Manarat Al Saadiyat.

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s award winning architect, Jean Nouvel, who has designed at least a dozen museums and museum installations worldwide, thinks that art houses nowadays must be places of both sense and sensibility.

“Architecture is the art of constraint, but architecture must also have attitude, so the museums may have dimensions and emotions, and create sense and sensibility,” he said. In his opinion, the architect must work closely with the artist and the art curator, as the museum building must reflect the museum’s content.

In the case of Louvre Abu Dhabi, for example, Nouvel spent time studying the emirate, its geography, its people, its heritage and culture, he spent time understanding the concept of the future museum before designing the building.

“Louvre Abu Dhabi is at the limit of water and sand, transcended by light. The museum is a small city, but opened to the sky, and every space translates the nobility of the artworks,” he explained.

For Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, famous for large installations, who was also present on the panel of discussions at ADA, they are also spaces of rituals and spirituality. “Muse... Museums... The house of the muse... A kind of box full of art,” he began singing his presentation.

Neto’s point of view is that museums are in a process of change, not just the buildings, but the people visiting them and the art they contain too. No longer is just the small high society elite enjoying museums, and no longer do they just display paintings and sculptures of kings or fruit.

Optical illusions, live art involving all senses now marks the art of the 21st century. “Museums are palaces, castles, places for the spirit, where people, culture gather to share experiences,” said Neto.

Jean Francois Charnier, the curatorial scientific director of the French Museums Agency, the organisation in charge of the Louvre Abu Dhabi content, believes the space of the museum has to have a concept, just as its content.

“At Louvre Abu Dhabi we thought of a tour through the galleries that would build a narrative, a journey from the beginning of art, some 5000 years before our times,” he explained.

The journey would continue to the modern times, to Piet Mondarian, the early 1900s abstract painter. So far, Louvre Abu Dhabi has acquired 582 artworks to tell the world’s art history.

silvia@khaleejtimes.com