The British Museum gets a makeover with archistars and help from in-house staff
There are museums that still retain an aura of intangibility and permanence, as if time had never passed and their image had become a brand and an icon.
by Fulvio Irace
4' min read
4' min read
There are museums that still retain an aura of intangibility and permanence, as if time had never passed and their image had become a brand and an icon.
The Vatican Museums and the Uffizi, in Italy; the Louvre, in Paris; the Met in New York; the Altes Museum in Berlin, the Rjiksmuseum in Amsterdam, etc.: the list is long and mostly coincides with those museums that came into being between the 18th and 19th centuries as repositories of great national treasures.
But this perception is almost always the result of a suggestion or a lack of in-depth knowledge, belied by the reality of a history that instead tells us that even these 'perennial' institutions are living organisms that, in order to adapt to the changing cultural environment, are forced to transform themselves in a more or less obvious way: the expansion of collections pushes them to plan rearrangements of existing spaces or outright additions; the change in museum audiences and the need to reach growing segments of visitors by accommodating their requests for self-recognition in the documents of the past, impose drastic choices on how to display works that might offend the ethical codes of inclusiveness (for example in ethnographic museums of colonial origin, but also in classical ones where Roman sculptures and African masks are called upon to confront each other); the need to reach out to communities who see in museum spaces the answer to the lack of public spaces, are the stimulus to create environments that are somewhere between a traditional cultural space and a social centre.
Never before has the world of museums been in turmoil, between bewilderment and enthusiasm: renewal cannot be postponed, but the ways forward are all to be defined: the same new technologies (internet, digital, touchscreen, smartphones) that have rewritten our mechanisms for thinking and communicating, are full of both promise and threat.
This was discussed at Mudec in Milan during the Forum of Culture, where the theme of intervention on consolidated historical buildings was also addressed, just as the news arrives that one of the most illustrious British institutions, the British Museum in London, is gearing up to face the most demanding challenge in its century-long history. In fact, the result of the first phase of selection of the six design teams (including that of the Dutch OMA with the consultancy of our own Salvatore Settis) that will compete for the contract to redevelop the museum in the nineteenth century by Sir Robert Smirke in the grandiose neoclassical style that has imposed itself in our minds as the best logo for the place where the famous Parthenon marbles are kept.
