Embedded in the white ash floor at the threshold to Baltimore's New Wing for Modern Art, a tombstone-shaped granite slab bears a three-word inscription: "DEAF DUMB BLIND"
More than any other element, that simple steppingstone by artist Bruce Nauman sums up the essence of the zigzagging metal building that has been taking shape for the past two years on the grounds of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
A companion to a well-known Nauman neon sculpture on the opposite side of the museum, "VIOLINS VIOLENCE SILENCE," the marker imparts a powerful message with its almost accusatory tone: Pay attention. Don't be deaf, dumb and blind to your surroundings. Look alive!
That same set of messages is relayed loud and clear by the design of the three-story, $10 million wing that opens October 16 after a week of previews.
From the burnished aluminum skin outside to the large, luminous galleries inside, the building makes a break from the past, physically and intellectually. It does so with mixed results:
Inside, the new wing is a masterpiece of organization and clarity, with spaces that provide an entirely new way to view art. They will be copied from coast to coast.
Outside, it strives to pique visitors' interest about what's going on inside. But mostly it falls flat, very flat -- lacking the weight and dignity of the rest of the museum, or any affinity to it.
That jarring juxtaposition is a major disappointment for a prestigious commission that should have been a tour de force. But it's not unexpected from a creative team that said it would design "from the inside out."
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The 35,000-square-foot new wing occupies the west end of the museum property next to the Cone Wing, the last developable parcel on the museum's grounds. Containing paintings, sculpture and photographs, it is the largest single space in Maryland devoted to art of the 20th century.
The job of designing a building that took advantage of this prime site fell to Bower Lewis Thrower/Architects, a Philadelphia-based firm that has worked on six phases of museum expansion and restoration since 1977.
Among its credits is the 1982 wing on the east side of the complex, a sensitive addition that continued the lines and materials of the original 1929 neoclassical museum, designed by John Russell Pope and others, while still making a contemporary architectural statement. The new wing has been conceived as a bookend of sorts to the 1982 wing -- a building that could complete the symmetry of the museum without being purely symmetrical.
Museum director Arnold Lehman and deputy director Brenda Richardson asked the architects to design "clean, classical" spaces that don't upstage the art.
They also wanted large galleries: modules of 25 feet by 25 feet or multiples thereof, with ceilings up to 25 feet high. And they wanted the new wing to feel different, yet part of the larger museum.
"If people hadn't felt that they entered something new, we would have failed," Ms. Richardson said. "But if people didn't have a sense that there is relationship to the rest of the museum, we would have failed, too."
The architects responded with an addition that is more of a departure from the neoclassical landmark than was their 1982 wing.
Because of the limited site, they were unable to fit the gallery modules on the west end and keep them on the same orthogonal grid as the rest of the museum.
But by cranking the addition at a 30-degree angle and building it up against the western property line, they were able to identify enough land within the museum grounds to construct the galleries in the shape the museum staff wanted.
As with the 1982 wing, the architects designed a glass connector to mark the juncture between old and new. A concrete rotunda behind the glass serves as a "hinge" that helps reorient visitors entering the new wing from the museum's Cone Wing.
In keeping with the idea of making a break from the past, the architects and their clients rethought practically every aspect of the older building to come up with a better way to present works of modern art.
This rethinking led to several interior design breakthroughs, including clustered galleries whose corners are cut away so one space flows into another, and a fluorescent lighting system that turns exhibit areas into veritable light boxes.
The designers' search for just the right materials and finishes further helped create distinctive settings. The white ash floor, for example, is not only handsome but effective in reflecting light from above. The delicate truss work that supports the roof in the tallest galleries has a vaguely industrial feel that recalls the kind of loft spaces where artists may have worked.
Uneasy tension
The exterior breaks from the past as well. Instead of continuing the neoclassical lines and rich Tennessee limestone of the Pope building, the new wing is clad in scored aluminum panels. Like the galleries inside, it's cocked at a 30-degree angle to the rest of the museum.
This design is clearly an extension of the strong internal logic that guided the planning of the gallery modules. The architects say they wanted to create an addition that expressed the nature of the collection.
"You always want people to be intrigued," said project architect James Dart. "You want them to wonder what's inside."
Although the appendage succeeds in conveying a modernist expression, it relates poorly to the rest of the museum. The grid shift creates an uneasy tension between old and new, and it breaks the rhythm of the neoclassical landmark to the east. The break is further accentuated by the flatness of the aluminum skin -- a 20th-century material intended to reflect the 20th-century art inside.
The minimalist-to-the-max look is negated by the introduction of concrete at the base, around the loading dock and above the staff entrance. This rougher material, with its industrial connotations, fights with both the refined quality of the aluminum and the limestone on the older building. It makes the new wing look like a car wash.
Andy Warhol, whose work is featured inside, would probably have loved the Pop sensibility of a museum-cum-carwash: WashWorks 'n' Warhol. But that's precisely what's wrong with ++ the design: It's a one-liner that underscores the newness and differentness of the latest addition. It should have emphasized the wholeness of a museum that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The new wing also encroaches on Benjamin Latrobe's tiny Oakland Spring House, which frames the museum's west lawn. In preparation for the grand opening, the historic structure was repainted and lighted at night for the first time. Because the new wing's serrated wall now comes so close, though, the house looks like a hood ornament on a tank.
Right and wrong
How could the inside be so right and the outside be so wrong, when one is a direct expression of the other? Because the architects applied the same thinking to the outside as they did to the inside, when they needed to do more.
For the galleries, the designers could play with shifting geometries and new lighting because they were creating interior spaces that had no direct effect on the city beyond. Their chief concern was the galleries' impact on the art.
But the exterior of the building shouldn't have been designed in the same kind of vacuum. It needed to be compatible with its neighbors, in this case the older part of the museum and the Johns Hopkins University campus to the north.
Thematically, it may have served the architects' purpose to design a building that reads as a break from the past. But this one comes across as irreverent and callous, a willful attempt to do a number on the old "temple of art." It deserved better.
Before his death last month, former city planning director Larry Reich frequently voiced concerns about the danger of growth for growth's sake. Cities or institutions set out to build and build and build, he warned, and before long they've managed to destroy all the good things that made people want to be there in the first place.
The Baltimore Museum of Art has not reached that point yet, and one hopes it never will. There's nothing wrong with museum curators who strive to create the best possible home for art. As the opening of the new wing approaches, they can take immense pride in the collection and the way it has been installed.
But they -- or someone -- should have been more concerned about what the metal receptacle was doing to the larger entity known as the Baltimore Museum of Art. No one seems to have cared that the new building was rising at the expense of the old.
Now that the new wing is complete, a greater sense of balance and perspective is needed on Art Museum Drive. This was the last developable site on the museum's grounds, yet the museum will certainly want to keep growing, somewhere.
Before another project of this magnitude is launched, three questions should be answered: Why did the people who did such a good job of honoring the art inside fail to do the same with their own building? When did the priorities shift so dramatically from Pope to pop? And, how could one get them to shift back?