Even the gifted journalist Julia Klein had her work cut out for her on this assignment: "Interview the architects of the Parkway Barnes and make sense of what they are doing." Her report in
The Wall St. Journal includes some real gems from the lips of architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien themselves that reveal something between deep lack of understanding and shallow attempts to explain to themselves what they just don’t get about the real Barnes. But then again, their guides have been people who want to move it to the Parkway.
“Early in the design process, Mr. Williams said, the architects likened their proposed vertical expansion, which would have slipped in an extra floor, to a "Philly cheesesteak." ‘We thought it represented the common man,’ he said. ‘We were saying that this thing that's so elitist out there, by coming into the city, had to connect with the common man—and we're still pushing for that,’ even though that particular architectural option proved impractical.”
So the Parkway project that will likely cost $200 million with an admission ticket of at least $20 and probably $25 a pop is for the cheesesteak crowd, and the real Barnes that was given as a gift to the American people by Albert C. Barnes, Everyman’s hero and a super progressive thinker, is “elitist”? Come off it, Tod.
"So much of the art, Impressionism, is about nature, and virtually every Matisse is somehow looking from inside to outside," Mr. Williams said. "But, sadly, at the existing site, there's only one set of windows that is open—the main gallery. We felt there was too little connection for the visitor to the nature, to the outdoors, and it was too claustrophobic." Oh, brother. Has this man ever been to the Barnes in Merion, the 12-acre arboretum, where the moment you step through the gates you cannot help but let the world fall away?
On the Parkway, you can’t incorporate the environment -- it’s the continuous sound of thousands of cars, trucks, and buses just yards away -- you have to mask it.
The caption for an artist’s rendering of the fountain tells the story: “Tabletop Fountain: The fountain will introduce a grand, communal feature to the plaza. Waterlilies will float along the surface and spilling water will mask the sound of cars on the Parkway.” (Courtesy of the Barnes Foundation) So much for the connection to nature on the Parkway.
"There were things at first that we didn't really understand—which is that every single piece of furniture has to remain," Mr. Williams said. "One of the mantras we've had recently is that we've accepted the installation. Our general mantra is to simplify and intensify. We want to intensify the viewing of the art," in part by mitigating gallery fatigue.
So, the real Barnes is not intense enough? The experience of the Barnes in Merion is unlike anything in the world precisely for its intensity, its intimacy, its “wonder” effect. These architects must have visited The Barnes with some kind of mental and emotional armour on.
The Parkway structure Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are making will make a great place for a museum of contemporary art. That would be a contribution.
But the story about The Barnes, the real Barnes, the only Barnes was expressed by Peter Schjeldahl in his New Yorker article, “
Untouchable”: “You don’t view the installation so much as live it, undergoing an experience that will persist in your memory like a love affair that taught you some thrilling, and some dismaying, things about your character. If there were other places like the Barnes, dispensing with it would not be tragic. But one minus one is zero.”
A structure on the Parkway that has been described as two shoeboxes with a glow stick on top is no place for The Barnes.
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