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The Contemporary Teaching Museum is
designed for a site near the Fens in Boston and houses modern artworks from The Peggy
Guggenheim Collection.
The Conservation Department
The Conservation Department specializes in the
conservation needs of modern and contemporary artwork with mixed media and non-traditional
materials and has two related missions. The Department is equipped with art diagnostic
technology, but flexibility for future developments and problems in the conservation needs
of contemporary hybrid artifacts, which cross-traditional curatorial boundaries is
anticipated. The Conservation Department at the Guggenheim Teaching Museum has two related
missions. The Conservation Department attends to the conservation needs of selected Modern
artifacts from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which require a level of care that their
current home in Venice cannot provide. The transient media and avant-garde techniques of
these modern artworks: Paintings (the large Jackson Pollacks), Works on Paper (the
Mondrian charcoal and oil pastel sketches), Objects (the Joseph Cornell Boxes), and
Sculptures (the awkward Calders) now make the work very sensitive to light and air, and
difficult to exhibit.
The Conservation Department also concludes analytical
assessments and performs conservation work on Modern Artwork received on a loan basis from
other museums and private collections in the New England Region. To extend it's outreach
efforts in the community, the Department offers an internship-training program to students
and art professionals, which operates in conjunction with the public collection study
facilities and nearby vocational schools to provide conservators in training with hands on
instruction.
All Conservation areas have access to day and
artificial light, to an outdoor work or overflow work area, and have darkening capacity
for dark rooms, x-ray, infra-red/uv, conference rooms, and storage spaces.
The Study Collection
The Collection Studies Areas are dedicated to the
public outreach programs of art education and to visiting scholars who conduct research on
specific works of art. The Study Collections Areas were hard fought in the debate over how
the building's budget was to be distributed. The Board wished to support the traditional
scholarly study that has characterized curatorial work in art history, but recognized the
concomitant need to open the Museum to the public through the educational mission of the
Collections Study and its potential to make an impact in the community through the public
outreach program of the Conservation Department. There is a sentiment that Collection
Study should be much larger than the square footage provided and solutions are sought to
expand the educational potential of the facility without increasing the budget.
Unlike the traditional library or
"media-tech", research (re-chercher = looking once again) in the Teaching Museum
involves three inter-related pursuits: the direct observation of artifacts and the
discussion about their features with colleagues, research about the artifacts in books and
data files, and information gained from electrified view enhancement: x-ray, infra-red and
ultra violet scans. These importance of these scans as study resource necessitates that
special attention be given to the surfaces (AV screens and computer terminals) on which
this information is observed, manipulated, co-related and studied.
The very different nature of these inter-related
research pursuits raise questions about the form and conception of the Collective Study
Areas (and the seemingly already well known concomitant spaces such as
"library", "study carrel" or "classroom") as well as it's
possible relation(s) with the Gallery Space and the Conservation Areas. The librarian has
argued that a "garden" would make the library more hospitable to the public as
well as to guest scholars but a consensus as to the viability of a "garden" for
this new type of library was not reached.
All study areas have access to day and artificial
light, to an outdoor "garden" for reading/study and artifact viewing, and have
darkening capacity for dark rooms, classrooms, library/carrel computer areas.
The Gallery
The specific spatial forms and architectural
character of the Gallery space will depend on the artwork selected, but the variety of
scales of work in The Peggy Guggenheim Collection ensures that display provisions will
address, and perhaps rethink, display strategies of cases, casements, pedestals, and
platforms as well as gallery space.
Unlike the traditional artist's atelier, (the modern
site of production), which is characterized by direct exposure to daylight, the
contemporary display space introduces into the building body the condition of the
partially darkened void, a hybrid of "natural" and "artificial light".
Because it is partially illuminated with indirect daylight and partially illuminated with
artificial light, the architectural problem that results engages the definition of a
mediated relation between exterior envelope -- roof/ceiling/floor or wall -- and interior
volume.
The conception and design of the gallery spaces will
reflect the mission of the Guggenheim Teaching Museum to address the care, preservation,
and exhibition of modern artworks with particular conservation problems. There is the
opportunity to speculate upon the usage of technologies of representation and education as
well as to rethink traditional gallery space and provide for alternative viewing
situations that are compatible with the conservation needs of the selected works. Gallery
and display space is to be provided for: Works on Paper (Mondrian Sketches),
Objects (Cornell Boxes),
Paintings (Large Pollacks) and
Sculptures (to be selected).
All artifact display areas have access to mediated
levels of artificial light, which varies according to needs of individual pieces. Direct
access to light is dangerous to artifacts in the collections. An outdoor "sculpture
court" is desired. Darkening capacity may be required for extremely light sensitive
materials.
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