Contemporary Art Galleries : Key Buildings

Major Arts Projects from around the World

Art Gallery Architecture - no images, alphabetical:

A G Leventis Art Gallery, Nicosia, Cyprus
2008-
Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects

Akademie der Kunste - Academy of Arts, Pariser Platz, Berlin, Germany
2005
Behnisch, Behnisch + Partner

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
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Denton Corker Marshall Architects

Art Gallery extension, Vancouver, Canada
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Michael Maltzan

Berlin Academy of Arts, Pariser Platz, Berlin, Germany
2005
Behnisch & Partner with Werner Durth

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
1963
Le Corbusier

Centre d`Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain
1989
Pinon, Viaplana, Architects

James Simon Gallery, Museum Island, Berlin, Germany
2007
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Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, USA
1986
Arata Isozaki / Gruen Associates

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA
1996
Josef Paul Kleiheus

National Gallery in Tokyo, Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan
2005
Kisho Kurokawa

National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan
1959
Le Corbusier

The Richard and Lois Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
2003
Zaha Hadid Architects

Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea, London
2008
Paul Davis + Partners / Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
Saatchi Gallery Chelsea

Studio Weil Private gallery for Barbara Weil, Port d'Andratx, Mallorca, Spain
2003
Architect: Studio Libeskind

Tate Gallery Liverpool, England
1988
Phase 1: James Stirling Michael Wilford and Associates

Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran
1977
Kamran Diba

Wakayama - The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan
1994
Kisho Kurokawa

Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
1901
C. Harrison Townsend

Whitechapel Gallery Building Expansion, London
2009
Robbrecht en Daem with Witherford Watson Mann
Whitechapel Art Gallery Building

More Art Gallery Design + Projects welcome

Art Gallery Buildings - main page, with images

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Good things can happen by accident

[alan dunlop]

I once missed the turn-off for the Grand Canyon and ended up seeing Utah. Had I not turned back I would have missed Arizona, renowned for desert, quality of light and Taliesin West. In Phoenix, I went looking for Frank Lloyd Wright but discovered instead a jewel of an art gallery and museum.

The Heard Museum of Native American Cultures and Art was founded by Dwight and Maie Heard in 1929 in their home. As their collection increased it became internationally respected. The museum building has grown substantially but retains a domestic scale that is a hospitable backdrop for art. There is a sequence of shaded courtyards showcasing sculpture, and the native art rests easy in an environment that welcomes rather than alienates. I stayed so long I never made it to Taliesin.

Art galleries and museums are often overwhelming. ‘The first thing you want to do is have a cup of coffee,’ said Louis Kahn. ‘You feel so tired immediately.’ Not so the Burrell Gallery. For some, the collection of industrialist Sir William Burrell is more notable for its eclecticism than its quality, but there are works by Degas, Renoir and the Scottish Colourists. The collection may be an indulgence but the building by Barry Gasson and Brit Anderson is rigorous. Constructed from Locharbriggs red sandstone in Glasgow’s Pollock Park, it incorporates elements of the collection into the fabric and is designed in terraces to meld into its setting. It is a play of subtlety and respect for both context and content. Completed in 1983, it is yet to be surpassed as an art gallery and museum in the UK.

“The Quadracci Pavilion diminishes the collection it houses”

Gasson and Anderson must have known the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek, Denmark, where art, architecture and landscape are also skilfully integrated. On the Oresund seafront, Jorgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert have over 35 years created a sequence of discreet, unpretentious galleries. The Louisiana Collection includes contemporary Danish art and works by Picasso, Lichtenstein and Henry Moore. Before starting to design, Bo and Wohlert spent months on site in 1957, understanding the landscape, carrying on ‘a kind of dialogue with the natural surroundings’. Their larger and most recent buildings, assisted by Claus Wohlert, are partially set into the ground to minimise their impact and to retain an uninterrupted vista to the sea. The spaces are bright and simply constructed with white rendered walls, timber roofs and screens. As with the Burrell, buildings follow the slope externally but internally levels are maintained, creating terraces to maximise daylight to the galleries.

Wall-to-wall glazed screening framing a view is also used by Renzo Piano in the Beyeler Foundation Art Museum near Basel. Here the landscape is ordered by the architecture and the building is much more a recognisable statement than in Humelbaek or Glasgow. The galleries slip between retaining walls which run north to south to maintain a level floor as the site drops west to east. It is a sophisticated structure with brises-soleil regulating the daylight. Internally, finishes are muted to respect the art. The Beyeler represents a transition between the gallery integrated to landscape and architecture which seeks to dominate it, in this case as ‘a ship lying anchored alongside the busy road’.

Art galleries and museums confer cultural status. Every city needs one. Many new projects, however, seem driven by the desire to create an architectural statement rather than to provide a venue that is welcoming and accessible. Calatrava’s first building in the US, the Quadracci Pavilion at Milwaukee Art Museum, completed in 2002, is the antithesis of the Louisiana Museum. Originally intended as an extension to Eero Saarinen’s stark War Memorial, it dominates their shared lakefront location. Built in dazzling white concrete, the entrance from a suspension bridge bursts into a 30m high glass reception hall. A sculptured louvered sunscreen on the roof rises and lowers to control the sun at set intervals during the day. ‘The Flap’, recalling the fluke of a whale or the sail of a ship, has become a piece of performance art for tourists, many of whom never enter the gallery itself. Although immaculately detailed and constructed, the building diminishes the collection it houses, which includes work by Winslow Homer and Georgia O’Keefe. The collection of American decorative arts after 1960 is apparently among the nation’s finest. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much of it… I went for a cup of coffee. Jan 2007

World Architecture : e-architect - key buildings across the globe

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Art Gallery Architecture : page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt