A Home for Art That’s Outside the Box
The decision by the Museum for African Art to hire Robert A.M. Stern to design its new home that’s nearing completion on the northeast corner of Central Park was a bit of a head-scratcher.
Mr. Stern’s most noted recent contribution to the New York skyline was 15 Central Park West, a deluxe, retro-chic limestone condominium that was a perfect example of the “apartment house” notion that Mr. Stern has long championed. With its classic high ceilings and luxurious lobby, it became a big hit with the city’s well-heeled set and rang up more than $2 billion in sales to buyers like Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and entertainer Sting.
But Mr. Stern’s apartment house concept is at its heart deeply elitist. In an interview recently at Yale’s School of Architecture, of which he’s the dean, Mr. Stern says the idea is based on the notion of Parisian buildings with the concierge on the first floor, the wealthy aristocracy on the next few floors, so they don’t have to walk up too many stairs, the less well-off petit-bourgeois above them, and the servants on the top floors, which, in the pre-elevator era, required serious cardiovascular strain to access.
Mr. Stern says he’s proud of his track record of building marquee structures with steep price tags. “I’m not part of the Occupy Wall Street set,” he said “Why should I be upset that Lloyd Blankfein lives in my building? There are a number of private people there who aren’t as well known but who are also captains of industry. These are very hard-working, successful people. You can’t always be popular.”
Still, the Museum for African Art, which is on the bottom floors of a $100 million building including gallery space and a 19-story luxury condo tower sought a structure that provides an inviting welcome to the lower-income communities of Harlem. The museum’s directors didn’t want a structure built “in the architectural vocabulary of elitism,” according to Elsie McCabe Thompson, the museum’s president.
But while there are no doubt good intentions behind the design of the museum development, which is scheduled to be completed next year, they’re being executed with considerable banality. The whole project resembles the condo towers being built near the Williamsburg waterfront these days: huge, contemporary boxes of glass, concrete panels and metal that have as little character as the chain retail stores that populate their ground floors.
The design of the museum is even more concerning. The main distinction in Mr. Stern’s design is the inclusion of dozens of what he calls “dancing mullions.” They are V-shaped window dividers that crawl up and down the sides of the building in a pattern meant to evoke African weaving-work and a sense of motion that characterizes some African art.
Mr. Stern explains this as a matter of populist consideration. “We wanted to make a museum that people feel comfortable coming to,” he said. “We didn’t want it to be a western, classical box. We believe it gives the sense of meaning and platform in some traditional African art.”
But it’s easy to find this element of the building annoying and reductive: just as one might think, looking at the outside of the Met or the Philadelphia Museum of Art, that all Western art begins and ends with classical aesthetics and proportions, the new museum at the top of Central Park suggests that the entire continent of Africa’s art never moved beyond quirky fabric patterns, or that it’s all funky, rhythmic shapes that evoke dance and positivity.
To be sure, the development when completed will add some flair to Duke Ellington Circle. Designs for the project show a grand, triple-height lobby that will open up the inside of the building northward toward Harlem. The project’s L-shaped footprint interacts nicely with the circle and the openness of Central Park’s northeast corner.
But in the end, the project is a victim of trying to do too much. The museum’s directors wanted Mr. Stern’s name on the building to help sell high priced condominiums that helped, through a sale of air rights, to pay for the museum space. But Mr. Stern’s strengths are far better suited to high-end apartment houses than a museum dedicated to the arts and cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora.
The museum, which is now housed in an administrative office in Long Island City, will get a shiny new home. But its collection deserves a stronger architectural statement.