Traditionally museums were houses, grand houses of princes and kings that held their collections of magnificent objects. Traditionally buildings were containers that subtly told their use and clearly told you how to use them. They had order, balance in composition, oftentimes symmetry and discernible entrances. We came to expect that a museum was a grand and imposing building that contained valuable paintings and sculpture.
When did that change? Early in the twentieth century, architects re-thought the notions of what buildings could be. Buildings started to be viewed as sculpture themselves. Architects explored new ways of building buildings and invented new forms for a modern society to live in. They changed the way we looked at buildings as radically as artists changed the way we looked at art. To some, a building had the potential to become a dynamic work of abstract art.
I.M. Pei designed the Everson Museum of Art to be a grand sculptural object, sitting in a plaza, surrounded by the forms of the modern city. He rejected the traditional notion that a museum needed to be a monumental container for art and decided it ought to be a sculptural work of art itself. He freed himself to design a building that could be experienced as sculpture.
We experience sculpture in three dimensions by moving around it. Sculpture is meant to be seen from multiple viewpoints over a period of time. I.M. Pei wants us to see his building from multiple viewpoints, to move around it, discover its forms and spaces. He wants us to discover how to enter the building and be delighted by the spaces we find.
This building breaks with tradition. It does not readily tell us how to use it, how to enter it or what to expect. This building does, in a very different way, tell us that it is about art. It tells us we should look at buildings and art from a different perspective. It asks us to explore and question what we think art, or sculpture, or spaces, or buildings should be. It rewards us with beautiful art, exciting spaces and a building that is dynamic, sculptural and beautifully crafted. What begins as a search for the front door becomes a journey to experience art and architecture from a new point of view.
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