Displaying items by tag: public museum

On February 13, 2015, Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Hollyhock House will reopen to the public. Located in Hollywood’s Barnsdall Art Park, the Hollyhock House was the first Wright-designed residence in Los Angeles. Commissioned by Aline Barnsdall, an eccentric oil heiress, the structure recently underwent a comprehensive conservation that cost $4.35 million to realize.

Built between 1919 and 1921, the Hollyhock House originally served as Barnsdall’s own venue for producing avant-garde plays. It later became a performing arts complex that included Barnsdall’s private home. In 1927, Barnsdall deeded the site and its structures to the city of Los Angeles.

When the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington — one of the nation’s oldest privately supported museums — announced in May that its artwork, landmark building and venerable school would be taken over by the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University, the arrangement was presented as a done deal.

But on Wednesday, a group of museum donors, current and former students, and former faculty and staff members went to court to try to block the dismantling of the Corcoran, saying it would violate the 1869 deed and the charter of the museum’s founder, William W. Corcoran, a banker who gave his art for the “perpetual establishment and maintenance of a public gallery and museum” to promote painting, sculpture and other fine arts. The opponents, members of a group called Save the Corcoran, contend in court papers that museum trustees want to “commit the gravest form of fiduciary breach: to destroy the very institution they are charged with protecting.”

Is the Whitney set to supplant MoMA as New York’s go-to modern art museum? The institution will begin moving into its new Renzo Piano building later this year, with the Meatpacking District location opening to the public about one year from now. It’s hard to say how exactly the new building and location will change the dynamic among New York’s top tier of art museums, but a look at the numbers makes it clear that the Whitney’s move is literally and symbolically huge, and will put it in more direct competition with the Museum of Modern Art.

The Whitney’s Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue is much smaller than most people realize. At just 85,000 square feet, it is markedly smaller, for instance, than the new 100,000-square-foot Hauser Wirth & Schimmel gallery in Los Angeles—which, to be fair, is an exceptionally huge gallery.