In one of his first official tours of the new Sydney Modern, after a decade or so of developing the project as director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Michael Brand highlighted some distinctive pieces: a new commissioned work for a Aboriginal artist using scrap metal; an immersive sculpture, originally on display in Seoul, that visitors create by rolling mud into balls; and a giant video of a New Zealander, imagining Oceania without people of European descent.
However, at every stop, Sydney’s natural surroundings stole the spotlight.
State officials tailing Brand — having paid most of the museum’s $230 million construction cost — praised the views more than the artwork.
The new building, designed by Sanaa, the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architects, also seemed unsure what to boast of, with glass walls opening up to the big blue sky and glittering Sydney Harbour.
Dozens of cities have tried to create their own unions of art, architecture and landscapes as part of a global museum-building boom that began in the 1990s with Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain.
The new Whitney in New York, with its expansive views of the High Line and the Hudson River, and the Louvre’s new Arabian-galactic outpost in Abu Dhabi on the shores of the Persian Gulf are among the most prominent recent additions.
However, Sydney Modern, which doubles the exhibition space of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, one of Australia’s leading art institutions, faces a particularly crucial cultural challenge.
Building museums in a real estate-obsessed city—in the sunny heart of a proud “sports nation”—often requires overcoming a barrier of negativity.
The Sydney Opera House was hated before it was loved, and Modern has already come down a rocky road.
Some critics, including a former prime minister, have condemned the project from the start, largely for taking away valuable green space. Others have taken to calling the completed building, which opened in December, an ugly and expensive collection of boxes stacked on a towering hillside. The price of the project is far from exorbitant — it is in line with the average cost per square meter of cultural infrastructure in the region, AEA Consulting said.
Yet Sydney’s elites have a long history of underinvesting in cultural ambitions while demanding measurable returns, said Ross Gibson, a professor of creative and cultural research at the University of Canberra.
“Most of the rulers and commentators really believe that ‘culture’ is a luxurious, non-essential additive,” he said.
In practice, Brand and his team say they want to balance a respect for traditional Sydney with a touch of provocation.
They know their brand-new museum must first satisfy inflexible officials: admission is free; the State of New South Wales covers the gallery’s operating budget.
However, the expansion, along with curatorial shakeups in the old building, is also aimed at getting people to see Australia’s largest city with new eyes — as a cultural center with deep indigenous roots and close ties to its Asian neighbors, turning less to the United States or Europe in search of validation.
Brand, an Australian art historian, calls the complex, with its new building, “a continuation of Sydney.”
The new addition is definitely different from the museum’s original neoclassical building, completed in 1909, which sits next door.
Lower in height and without a dramatic façade, the Modern first impressions almost like a type of airport—a glass box with a metal roof.
Inside, there is greater warmth and fluidity. The design of the entrance points to the Yiribana Gallery of Aboriginal Art, which has been elevated from a lower story of the original building and offers a sweeping view onto terraced gardens and sloping walkways.
On two recent mornings, visitors praised the indoor and outdoor experiences, where sculptures offered a place to sit or be shaded and a cafe offered croissants and a perfect espresso.
“It’s so open and welcoming, it feels like a playground,” said David Galafassi, a 44-year-old doctor and musician.
By: Damien Cave
The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6534396, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-17 23:00:07
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