Abstract
Art museums have become pervasive in contemporary cities; they are no longer limited to cosmopolitan centers alone but are spread across small- to medium-sized cities around the world. Just as the reasons for creating museums have evolved and spread, so the architectural form of museums have been just as flexible: located in former royal palaces or former industrial structures or standing as contemporary architectural icons. This chapter gives an overview of the issue by presenting three categories of the architecture of art museums, discussing within each the wide range of possibilities that yet manage to fit within these constraints. These three categories consist of existing structures converted into museums, newly created structures designed to be museums, and hybrid structures that contain elements of both. These categories go beyond any kind of linear chronological development, with examples spanning centuries, continents, and scales. This contribution is by no means the first attempt to develop a framework on the architecture of museums, but it ultimately argues that such discussions must go beyond a purely architectural lens to embrace a multidisciplinary approach that considers the history of the structures, the purposes of their collections, and the contexts in which they are created. The chapter concludes by considering some of the emerging trends in art museums from the opening up of storage to visitors to collections that are entirely digital and virtual.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Basso Peressut, G. L. (2005). Il museo moderno. Architettura e museografia da Perret a Kahn [The Modern Museum. Architecture and Museography from Perret to Kahn]. Lybra Immagine.
Bennett, T. (2013). The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. Routledge.
Calafat, M. C. (2021). The Mucem’s Centre for Conservation and Resources: Promoting Collections and Cultural Heritage Careers. Museum International, 73(1–2), 120–129.
Caygill, M. (1981). The Story of the British Museum. Trustees of the British Museum.
DeBlock, H. (2019). The Africa Museum of Tervuren, Belgium: The Reopening of ‘the Last Colonial Museum in the World’: Issues on Decolonization and Repatriation. Museum & Society, 17(2), 272–281.
Emmer, M. (2018). Zaha Hadid: Fluid and Topological Architecture. In M. Emmer & M. Abate (Eds.), Imagine Math 6 (pp. 27–45). Springer.
Giebelhausen, M. (Ed.). (2003). The Architecture of the Museum: Symbolic Structures, Urban Contexts. Manchester University Press.
Huber, A., & Mulazzani, M. (1997). Il Museo Italiano: la Trasformazione di Spazi Storici in Spazi Espositivi: Attualità dell’Esperienza Museografica degli Anni’50 [The Italian Museum: The Conversion of Historic Spaces into Exhibition Spaces: The Relevance of Museographical Experiences of the Fifties]. Edizioni Lybra immagine.
Jenkins, T. (2016). Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums-and Why They Should Stay There. Oxford University Press.
Lindsay, G. (Ed.). (2020). Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design: Theory and Practice of Place. Routledge.
Loddo, M. (2020a). Franco Albini e Caterina Marcenaro: A Productive Relationship in the Genovese Cases of Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Rosso. Nuova Museologia, 43, 40–45.
Loddo, M. (2020b). Storage Facilities for the Collection of Western Art Museums. A Focus on the Italian Context. Maggioli SPA. Politecnica Series. https://doi.org/10.30448/UNI.43162.20
Macdonald, S. (Ed.). (2011). A Companion to Museum Studies (Vol. 39). John Wiley & Sons.
Marani, P. C., & Pavoni, R. (2006). Musei: Trasformazioni di un’Istituzione dall’Età Moderna al Contemporaneo [Museums: Institutional Transformations in the Modern and Contemporary Eras]. Marsilio Editori spa.
McClellan, A. (1999). Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris. University of California Press.
Pei, I. M. (2018). Erweiterung Grand Louvre in Paris. In Gebäude, die Zeichen setzen/Landmark Buildings. In C. Schittich (Ed.), A Review of Three Decades of Architecture (pp. 13–18). DETAIL.
Portland Art Museum. (n.d.). A Brief History of the Museum. Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://portlandartmuseum.org/about/brief-history-museum/
Roos, L., Favre, F., Hagmann, M., & Chesham, K. (2019). Metamorphosis. En Face. ISBN: 978-94-6366-180-5.
Schubert, K. (2000). The Curator’s Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day. One-Office Press.
Taylor, K. (2011). The Thorny Path to a National Black Museum. The New York Times. Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23smithsonian.html
Tzortzi, K. (2016). Museum Space: Where Architecture Meets Museology. Routledge.
UNESCO. (2019). The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Retrieved September 5, 2021, from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1496
van Beurden, J. M. (2017). Treasures in Trusted Hand Negotiating the Future of Colonial Cultural Objects. Sidestone Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jones, Z.M., Loddo, M. (2023). Buildings and Architecture: Typologies That Defy Definition. In: Redaelli, E. (eds) Visiting the Art Museum. Sociology of the Arts . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12089-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12089-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-12088-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-12089-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)