Zaha Hadid’s wildly curvaceous design for Rome’s new art museum is certainly spectacular – but not fit for purpose, says Ellis Woodman
How do you design a museum to house the art of a century that has yet to begin? That was the challenge faced by a group of architects who, in 1999, were invited to submit proposals for a museum of 21st-century art to be built in Rome.
Altogether the least experienced of the competitors was the London-based Zaha Hadid, an architect whose designs had earned her an unrivalled reputation for spatial experimentation but who, after 20 years of practice, had only a couple of modest completed buildings to her name.
Her Rome proposal gave plenty of indication as to why that might be: a frenzied intermeshing of gargantuan concrete forms, it would clearly be fantastically difficult to build, eye-wateringly expensive and impose some of the most demanding curatorial constraints of any gallery in the world. The jury was widely expected to admire it for the sculptural tour de force that it clearly was – and hastily transfer it to the reject pile.
And yet, in a decision that was surely motivated less by the aim of building the best art gallery than by that of rejuvenating this most ancient of cities’ public image, they gave Hadid the job. Ultimately, the Italian authorities decided to build only the largest of the five interlinked buildings that she proposed, but it alone has taken a decade to build and cost a cool 150 million euros. This week , under the voguish moniker Maxxi, it finally opens its doors to the public.
Only then will it be possible to tell what sense the curators have made of the building’s positively Piranesian interior, but a recent preview of Maxxi’s empty shell gave me an idea of the scale of the challenge that this institution faces.
Some of the problems can’t be blamed on Hadid, not the least of which is the building’s location. The centre of Rome doesn’t readily accommodate new buildings of any great scale, so Maxxi has been built in a largely residential district that lies a 20-minute bus ride from the edge of the historic city centre.
Imagine that, in choosing the site of its museum of modern art, the Tate had passed on Bankside power station and opted for a plot in the outer reaches of Docklands. That is the sense one has at Maxxi – not a fatal move but one that will certainly prove a constraint on the audience that it can attract.
Of course, what might prove a fatal move would be to build Tate Modern in Docklands and then to find that you didn’t have anything to show in it. Alarmingly, this too is the sense one has at Maxxi. Its collection is being assembled from scratch, which is no small task given the scale of the building.
To date, about 300 items have been bought, but the gallery is being coy about what they might be. The highlights offered on its website – a smattering of minor works by some of the big names of the past century packed out by purchases from the younger generation of Italian artists – do little to instil confidence.
Given time and an enormous amount of investment, these issues can be addressed, but it is less clear how the profound shortcomings of the building itself can be resolved. The basic element from which Maxxi is composed is a storey-high, snaking gallery which, in some instances, extends for as far as 150 yards. These forms are employed repeatedly, weaving together on each floor to establish a labyrinthine exhibition terrain.
The space’s consistently epic scale and wildly curvaceous geometry is certainly spectacular, but what kind of art can possibly benefit from being shown in such conditions? Richard Serra’s work at the Bilbao Guggenheim – the largest sculptural installation in the world – perhaps suggests a way forward, but the suspicion remains that those pieces survive that building’s similarly fluid interior rather than thrive within it.
And paintings? Surely even very large canvasses will be reduced to the presence of postage stamps. As if these constraints weren’t severe enough, Hadid has even banned the mounting of work on the building’s walls (just in case a curator gets the wrong idea, they are frequently tipped off plumb) and has instead restricted them to adjustable partitions that are suspended from the ceiling.
One looks forward to hearing what artists think of their work being choreographed like so many Busby Berkeley showgirls, decorative incidents at the service of Hadid’s grand vision.
Frankly, I can’t think that I have ever encountered a gallery that addresses its nominal function with such seeming cynicism. We may be only beginning to discover what the art of the 21st century looks like, and no doubt much of it will take forms that we can’t yet imagine. Such uncertainty calls for an environment that can be adapted in myriad ways. Hadid’s truly tyrannical building is anything but that.
And yet, in a decision that was surely motivated less by the aim of building the best art gallery than by that of rejuvenating this most ancient of cities’ public image, they gave Hadid the job. Ultimately, the Italian authorities decided to build only the largest of the five interlinked buildings that she proposed, but it alone has taken a decade to build and cost a cool 150 million euros. This week , under the voguish moniker Maxxi, it finally opens its doors to the public.
Only then will it be possible to tell what sense the curators have made of the building’s positively Piranesian interior, but a recent preview of Maxxi’s empty shell gave me an idea of the scale of the challenge that this institution faces.
Some of the problems can’t be blamed on Hadid, not the least of which is the building’s location. The centre of Rome doesn’t readily accommodate new buildings of any great scale, so Maxxi has been built in a largely residential district that lies a 20-minute bus ride from the edge of the historic city centre.
Imagine that, in choosing the site of its museum of modern art, the Tate had passed on Bankside power station and opted for a plot in the outer reaches of Docklands. That is the sense one has at Maxxi – not a fatal move but one that will certainly prove a constraint on the audience that it can attract.
Of course, what might prove a fatal move would be to build Tate Modern in Docklands and then to find that you didn’t have anything to show in it. Alarmingly, this too is the sense one has at Maxxi. Its collection is being assembled from scratch, which is no small task given the scale of the building.
To date, about 300 items have been bought, but the gallery is being coy about what they might be. The highlights offered on its website – a smattering of minor works by some of the big names of the past century packed out by purchases from the younger generation of Italian artists – do little to instil confidence.
Given time and an enormous amount of investment, these issues can be addressed, but it is less clear how the profound shortcomings of the building itself can be resolved. The basic element from which Maxxi is composed is a storey-high, snaking gallery which, in some instances, extends for as far as 150 yards. These forms are employed repeatedly, weaving together on each floor to establish a labyrinthine exhibition terrain.
The space’s consistently epic scale and wildly curvaceous geometry is certainly spectacular, but what kind of art can possibly benefit from being shown in such conditions? Richard Serra’s work at the Bilbao Guggenheim – the largest sculptural installation in the world – perhaps suggests a way forward, but the suspicion remains that those pieces survive that building’s similarly fluid interior rather than thrive within it.
And paintings? Surely even very large canvasses will be reduced to the presence of postage stamps. As if these constraints weren’t severe enough, Hadid has even banned the mounting of work on the building’s walls (just in case a curator gets the wrong idea, they are frequently tipped off plumb) and has instead restricted them to adjustable partitions that are suspended from the ceiling.
One looks forward to hearing what artists think of their work being choreographed like so many Busby Berkeley showgirls, decorative incidents at the service of Hadid’s grand vision.
Frankly, I can’t think that I have ever encountered a gallery that addresses its nominal function with such seeming cynicism. We may be only beginning to discover what the art of the 21st century looks like, and no doubt much of it will take forms that we can’t yet imagine. Such uncertainty calls for an environment that can be adapted in myriad ways. Hadid’s truly tyrannical building is anything but that.
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