Academy of Classical Design Home Page

OPINIONS ON MUSEUMS AND PUBLIC ART

BY D. JEFFREY MIMS



Though the art museum as a public institution is a fairly recent development in civic life, public art has been with us since the earliest historic civilizations. Long before the Greeks established their unparalleld model for Western art, painting and sculpture were engaged as a civilizing influence in all cultures.
In Florence, Italy, birthplace of the Renaissance and cradle of education for many students pursuing classical traditions, the approach to the Uffizi Gallery is an artistic experience in itself. From the design of the piazza to the surrounding architecture accented with sculpture, the visitor is prepared to experience the treasures exhibited inside this celebrated museum.
Entrance to the Uffizi Gallery
Florence, Italy
Renowned as one of the most beautiful cities in the New World, Savannah, Georgia is home to the Telfair Museum, the oldest public art museum in the South. The Telfair family home opened as a public art museum and school in 1886, and sets a quietly majestic example for an art center through its location, architecture, and sculpture working in concert to identify its role as an institution to train and inspire artists.* The statues portray the Greek sculptor Phidias flanked by the immortal Renaissance artists Raphael and Michelangelo.
Telfair Museum of Art
Savannah, GA
In contrast to the above examples, the North Carolina Museum of Art, housing a marvelous collection of Renaissance and Baroque painting, greets the visitor with a building whose appearance could be confused with an insecticide factory. It is not without the obligatory three dimensional object that Tom Wolfe identified more accurately in his famous phrase - requoted recently by Prince Charles to describe similar arrangements.
North Carolina Museum of Art
Raleigh, NC
A very similiar effect is exhibited in this photograph. Though the focus of this building is commercial rather than artistic, the identifying aesthetics are strikingly similiar to the previous photograph.
A Building Supply Company
Anywhere, USA
*Sadly, the Telfair Museum is constructing a new $24 million "state-of-the-art" Jepson Center which promises to be "Savannah's latest landmark building." Like so many civic and university museum additions, this project is almost certainly guaranteed to be disconnected from the visual character and spiritual purpose of the original institution.