Public Art and Museums in Cultural Districts 9780815359579, 9781351120302

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: museum borders and disciplinary boundaries
PART I Monuments on the fringes of museums
2 Art districts in the visual culture of the Enlightenment and Romanticism
2.1 Classical statues and museums in the urban epicentres of art capitals
2.2 Museums and monuments as cultural lures for urban expansions
3 Statues of great artists erected near museums
3.1 The first urban monuments devoted to artists; pioneering cases adjacent to art institutions
3.2 Setting monumental trends in art districts at the turn of the century
3.3 The apex and last stages of those icons, relegated by other forms of cultural branding
PART II Modern arcadias
4 High culture on urban heights: the mouseion ideal as city crown
4.1 Cultural promontories in urban utopias from antiquity to the nineteenth century
4.2 The Mathildenhöhe: high court and Gesamtkunstwerk
4.3 Ill-fated derivations, from cultural urban crown to museum with broad views
5 Modernity expands into green fields
5.1 Gardens as extensions of museums in Rodin’s period and his legacy
5.2 Urban museums with sculpture gardens: a typical dream of the Modern Movement
5.3 Seeking greener pastures: modern art expansion in parks or rural estates
PART III Museums taken to the streets
6 Open air museums as an urban phenomenon
6.1 The rural genesis of open air museums – of ethnology rather than art
6.2 A political and urban landmark: Museo de la Castellana in Madrid
6.3 What’s in a name? Proliferation of the so-called museums of outdoor sculptures
6.4 An unambiguously urban trend of the present: museums of street art
7 Dialectics of museums/public art articulation at the turn of the millennium
7.1 Conceptual ‘antimonuments’ and institutional critique within museum environments
7.2 Postmodern return of monumental statues as popular attractions
7.3 Public art as an interface: overcoming boundaries between outdoor and indoor exhibition space
8 Epilogue: heritology, a new discipline for the study of public art and museums in cultural districts
References
Index

Citation preview

Public Art and Museums in Cultural Districts

Museums and public art have traditionally taken significantly different approaches to customer engagement, but throughout history they have also worked together in some urban contexts, notably as landmarks of so-called cultural districts. Public Art and Museums in Cultural Districts reviews their changing interactions in many different types of cities since the Enlightenment, or even before, going back to the etymological origins of museums and monuments in classical antiquity. The type of historical enquiry presented within the volume is not intended as a total narrative, but the international study cases considered convey a global panorama of the shifting paradigms set in different periods by some cultural neighbourhoods and emulated worldwide. Blurring boundaries between art history, museology and urbanism, this critical account explores past tensions, achievements and failures, giving insightful consideration to present policies and pointing out reasonable recommendations for the future regarding public heritage. Presenting for the first time insights into the role of collections of public art as landmarks of cultural districts, this book considers collections displayed outdoors from the double perspective of curatorial outreach and civic values. This book will fill a gap in the existing museum studies literature, hitherto mainly focused on indoor collecting and curatorial policies but increasingly more and more attentive to their outside context. As such, the book should be of great interest to academics, researchers and students working in the fields of art, heritage, museum studies and urban history. It should also be of value to professionals working in the museum and art sectors. J. Pedro Lorente is Professor of Art History at the University of Saragossa, Spain.

Routledge Research in Museum Studies

Collecting the Past: British Collectors and Their Collections from the 18th to the 20th Centuries ed. Toby Burrows and Cynthia Johnston Museum Communication and Social Media: The Connected Museum by Kirsten Drotner and Kim Christian Schrøder Climate Change and Museum Futures ed. Fiona Cameron and Brett Neilson Introducing Peace Museums Joyce Apsel Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice: Decolonizing Engagement Bryony Onciul Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry Through Collection and Display ed. Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon Belgian Museums of the Great War: Politics, Memory and Conference Karen Shelby Museums, Immigrants, and Social Justice Sophia Labadi Museum Storage and Meaning: Tales from the Crypt ed. Mirjam Brusius and Kavita Singh Global and World Art in the Practice of the University Museum ed. Jane Chin Davidson and Sandra Esslinger Exhibiting the Ancient Middle East: Curatorial Practices and Audiences ed. Geoff Emberling and Lucas P. Petit For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Museum-Studies/book-series/RRIMS

Public Art and Museums in Cultural Districts

J. Pedro Lorente

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 J. Pedro Lorente The right of J. Pedro Lorente to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-5957-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-12030-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements 1

Introduction: museum borders and disciplinary boundaries

vii x 1

PART I

Monuments on the fringes of museums 2

Art districts in the visual culture of the Enlightenment and Romanticism

9

11

2.1 Classical statues and museums in the urban epicentres of art capitals 15 2.2 Museums and monuments as cultural lures for urban expansions 25 3

Statues of great artists erected near museums

41

3.1 The first urban monuments devoted to artists; pioneering cases adjacent to art institutions 42 3.2 Setting monumental trends in art districts at the turn of the century 49 3.3 The apex and last stages of those icons, relegated by other forms of cultural branding 57 PART II

Modern arcadias 4

High culture on urban heights: the mouseion ideal as city crown 4.1 Cultural promontories in urban utopias from antiquity to the nineteenth century 72

69

71

vi

Contents 4.2 The Mathildenhöhe: high court and Gesamtkunstwerk 74 4.3 Ill-fated derivations, from cultural urban crown to museum with broad views 82

5

Modernity expands into green fields

101

5.1 Gardens as extensions of museums in Rodin’s period and his legacy 102 5.2 Urban museums with sculpture gardens: a typical dream of the Modern Movement 110 5.3 Seeking greener pastures: modern art expansion in parks or rural estates 119 PART III

Museums taken to the streets

131

6

133

Open air museums as an urban phenomenon 6.1 The rural genesis of open air museums – of ethnology rather than art 134 6.2 A political and urban landmark: Museo de la Castellana in Madrid 140 6.3 What’s in a name? Proliferation of the so-called museums of outdoor sculptures 145 6.4 An unambiguously urban trend of the present: museums of street art 155

7

Dialectics of museums/public art articulation at the turn of the millennium

165

7.1 Conceptual ‘antimonuments’ and institutional critique within museum environments 166 7.2 Postmodern return of monumental statues as popular attractions 178 7.3 Public art as an interface: overcoming boundaries between outdoor and indoor exhibition space 188 8

Epilogue: heritology, a new discipline for the study of public art and museums in cultural districts

204

References Index

207 221

Figures

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

3.5

3.6 3.7 4.1 4.2

Facade of the Municipal Museum of Calais with Rodin’s monument to the Burghers Charles Natoire: Artists drawing in the inner court of the Capitoline Museum, Rome Unknown author: Piazza della Signoria Hubert Robert: Entrance to the Musée Napoléon Hubert Robert: Artist drawing antiquities in front of the Louvre’s Petite Galerie James Pollard: Trafalgar Square, London Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder: Friedrichsplatz and Museum Fridericianum, Kassel Statue of Daoiz and Velarde by the facade of the Museo del Prado ca. 1890 Museum Square in Seville and monument to Murillo by the Prado Museum in Madrid Monuments to Velázquez and Raffet in the Jardin de l’Infante by the Louvre Boucher monument (also featuring the statue of Velázquez in the background) in the Jardin de l’Infante by the Louvre Monument to Meissonier in front of the entrance to the Louvre; monument to Gérôme at the Jardin de l’Oratoire by the Louvre Velázquez monument in front of the western facade of the Prado Museum; monument to Goya by the northern entrance to the Prado Museum York City Art Gallery, with the Etty Memorial in the square Statues of the Louvre’s Campo Santo Panoramic view of the Mathildenhöhe hill in the opening exhibition of 1901 Expressionist figures by Bernhard Hoetger in the forecourt of the Wedding Tower and exhibition building on the summit of the Mathildenhöhe

4 16 19 22 24 27 29 34 47 51 52

53

55 57 59 76

80

viii 4.3 4.4

4.5 4.6 4.7 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

Figures Rodin’s estate on a hill of Meudon Drawing of the ideal garden city, structured in concentric circles around a central square, bordered by public buildings, including a museum/art gallery Osthaus’s estate as Stadtkrone with public buildings; design by Bruno Taut Dionisio González: Musée à croissance illimitée (Le Corbusier), 2013 Aerial view of the Maeght Foundation, with the houses of Saint-Paul de Vence in the background Western facade of the Musée du Luxembourg Entrance to the Musée du Luxembourg with a display of sculptures outdoors Sculpture garden of the Musée Rodin in Paris, Rue de Varenne Facade of the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, inaugurated in 1944 Sculpture garden of the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague Sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin Beeldentuin Middelheim Museum, with the manor house and orangerie in the background The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Giuliano Vangi “Grande Racconto” in front of one of the museum buildings Open Air Museum of Hecho, with sculptures by Tramullas and other artists Museum of Public Art, 40 Paseo de la Castellana, Madrid Open Air Museum of Sculptures, Paris, by the Seine Museum Park of Sculptures, Providencia, by the Mapocho River Sculptures in Plaza de San Pedro, part of the Open Air Museum of Aracena Entrance to Leganés Museum of Sculptures, featuring a work by Pepe Noja Bilotti Open Air Museum in the pedestrian streets of Cosenza’s city centre Mural by Matilde Pérez with a vandalized sign at the Open Air Museum of Valparaíso Environment by Dani Karavan beside the Ludwig Museum in Cologne Facade of the Los Angeles County Museum featuring an outdoor collection with interpretative panels Main entrance to the Marseilles Museum of Contemporary Art, with some Conceptual artworks Piazza with artworks by the new entrance to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

84

88 90 94 95 104 105 107 114 116 117 121 125 139 141 146 147 150 153 154 156 169 173 174 176

Figures 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13

Installation by Julian Opie in front of the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin Hammering Man by Jonathan Borofsky, in front of the Seattle Art Museum Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, with Puppy by Jeff Koons Plaza Botero and Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia Curro González: As a monument to the artist, at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville Sculpture Museum, Marl, with collections inside and outside Lyons Museum of Contemporary Art, with artworks by Combas, Henri and Kirkeby Labelled outdoor collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bogotá National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, with Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare

ix 178 181 183 185 188 189 193 195 199

Acknowledgements

This publication is one of the outputs of the research project ‘Museums and artistic quarters: Public art, artists, institutions’ funded since January 2013 by the Spanish government (code HAR2012–38899-C02–01) and followed up to December 2018 by an ensuing project, ‘Museums and cultural districts: Art and institutions in areas of urban renewal’ (code HAR2015– 66288-C4–01-P). After years of work, I presented a first version of this essay in the competition for the chair of art history at Zaragoza University. I am grateful to the members of that academic panel for their generous reception and recommendations. Special thanks are also given to my fellows in the research project, especially María Ángeles Layuno and Javier Gómez Martínez for their remarks and suggestions after reading the first draft of the manuscript, complemented at a later stage by the enlightened comments of such great experts as Dominique Poulot, Christopher Whitehead and Stefania Zuliani, who wrote reports for Routledge, whose enthusiastic team also deserves thankful mention here. I am also indebted to Trea Editorial, the publishers of the original edition in Spanish, Arte público y museos en distritos culturales; its English translation has been professionally carried out by Rosa Anía and Noel Murphy. Finally, I very sincerely wish to express my gratitude to my wife and children without whose support and encouragement this book would not have been possible. JPL

1

Introduction Museum borders and disciplinary boundaries

The concept of ‘cultural landscapes’, one of the latest curatorial trends, provides an integral and integrated perspective on heritage beyond the traditional distinction between collections in situ and ex situ (Van Mench & Meijer-Van Mench, 2015: 75–76). Eye-catching signs marking art contexts both inside and outside galleries thus play a major part. It is already a museological commonplace to consider the interior of museums somehow as a continuation of public space, as their galleries are arranged in thoroughfares, side streets and roundabouts and garnished with such urban fittings as railings, streetlamps, benches, banners, flags, plants, monuments or artistic ornaments. Some major pieces of the collection may indeed work as museographical monuments – for example, the Winged Victory of Samothrace presiding over the inner stairs of the Louvre or Barnett Newmann’s Broken Obelisk in a hall inside the MoMA. Such monumental masterworks traditionally served to articulate different models of circulation indoors, just as the exterior interrelation between museums and their neighbourhoods has also been marked by other forms of monumentality. Appropriately enough, experts on architecture and city planning regularly examine these outstanding edifices, often ornamented with sculptures, murals or other decorative arts on their facades. Yet this book deals with other more neglected urban landmarks: monuments and public artworks erected closely together which have also been instrumental in connecting museums with cityscapes. Historical planning ideals have remarkably shaped these urban districts based on a series of ‘civilizing rituals’ (if we may apply to outdoor spaces the celebrated expression used by Carol Duncan, the prestigious art historian and museologist, as the title of her most famous book; Duncan, 1995). Certain archetypes still at play today in the interconnection between inner and outer spaces in museums go back to the very etymological origin of the term museum and to the fluctuating meaning attached to key words in cultural imagery. Agora was originally the name of the beach, near Troy, where the embattled armies piled their respective spoils during that long siege, a communal treasure whose display represented collective wealth in Greece; while templum, in Latin, conveyed the idea of a ‘delimited space’, as the demarcation of the site was a prerequisite for a temple to exist, including

2

Introduction

the perimeter of the land surrounding the actual sanctuary building (Azara, 2005: 103–104, 135). Mouseion is a hill on the outskirts of Athens adorned with fountains and monuments where a temple to the Muses was erected with statues and treasures during the classical period; it later gave its name to other similar sanctuaries, namely the one in Alexandria, which housed the famous library and academia so mythologized in posterity (Gómez Martínez, 2006: 69; Butler, 2007). Monumentum in Latin was a memorial, often funereal, to exalt remembrance of the past which was deemed worthy of remaining on public view for generations to come (Poulot, 2001: 34–35; García Guatas, 2009: 30–33). These and other cultural concepts have historically influenced mental associations between museums and other monumental ensembles in their urban context. They are examined in this book which provides a historical account from the Enlightenment to the present day and points out the fluctuating trends in such fruitful interrelations. As a matter of fact, no clear-cut borders have ever separated museum art from public art; very similar collections can be found both inside and outside the temples of the Muses, and some monumental pieces are sometimes even placed by the thresholds to escort visitors inside. Yet from the point of view of social use, a bipolar contraposition can be clearly established: museums are visited by art lovers seeking a cultural experience, whereas artworks in public spaces are encountered by chance, sometimes by people totally unconcerned with any aesthetic pursuit. This contrast has always been a key issue for me, repeated almost as a mantra, though not without a certain amount of uneasiness. It is not rare for an academic to encompass research fields dealing with diverse areas of study; however, devoting oneself to totally antagonistic matters might seem rather unwise. I have thus striven for years to find interconnecting points between these two ostensibly opposed poles, and this book is the result. As the title suggests, it does not exclusively deal with that dichotomy, tackling also the complex junction with urbanism, a discipline involving not just urban planning but also matters of placemaking in cities: the main thrust here is the development of ‘cultural districts’ where certain types of amalgams and demarcations have traditionally been delimited both in terms of space and mindset. Borders, above all, exist in our imagination. Based on this conceptual triangulation, my goal has been to analyze the history of influential standards which – intermingling curatorial outreach and civic values – have defined the interplay of museums and public art, paying particular attention to highly peculiar neighbourhoods that could be referred to as ‘art clusters’ using present-day terms of cultural policy. This vast panorama is covered here in an interdisciplinary analysis which blurs the boundaries of the history of art, museology and urbanism. Experts on these or other related disciplines are increasingly concerned with questioning the traditional division between the contents or activities within museums and those presented beyond the museum walls. I already learnt many of the concomitances between monuments/memorials and museums – often identified as institutions of memory – from a pioneering collective

Introduction

3

work in German titled Museum und Denkmalpflege (Auer, 1992); though it was a later French essay, Les musées à la lumière de l’espace public. Histoire, évolution, enjeux, that revealed to me the potential implications of Habermas’s theories about the ‘public sphere’ on museums and their projection into public spaces (Rasse, 1999). I later found particularly useful more specific Italian bibliographies on these issues (Minucciani, 2005; Costanzo, 2007); though, above all, my references are various books in English dealing with the endeavours undertaken by institutions and museums of contemporary art to reach out to citizens and attract new audiences outside the art system (Hein, 2006; Knight & Senie, 2018). The closest scholarly precedents in Spain – even in terms of layout with linked chapters dealing with consecutive concepts – are found in an essay on modern ideals of monuments interconnecting, from a spatial viewpoint, architecture and sculpture (Maderuelo, 2008), as well as the book by María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco, an art historian-cum-museologist whose pages, from the moment she alludes to ‘critical museology’, deal extensively with the urban concomitances between museums and other public events with open air displays (Jiménez-Blanco, 2014: 157). Indeed, reviewing the elusive urban limits between museums and public art could not be but a favourite argument for critical museologists, so keen to put their fingers in the interstices of institutional mediation, reconsidering museums as ‘contact zones’ – to use the celebrated expression coined by anthropologist James Clifford. One of his favourite instances was the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, which has become a world reference for critical museology and museography under the directorship of Anthony Shelton, not only with regard to museological thinking (Shelton, 2013) but also in curatorial practices. During a research stay there, I was amazed by the fact that parts of its collections are not only displayed and interpreted inside but also outside, both in front of the main gate, adjacent to the campus, and at the rear, in an open air site overlooking the bay and the city of Vancouver. Many museums of science and technology opt for a similar strategy outdoors, grabbing the attention of passersby with peculiar interactive devices or attractive specimens well identified with explanatory labels revealing an extroverted vocation naturally emerging from their definition as educational institutions for the dissemination of science. A more introverted attitude seems to be identified with the temples of the arts, which is a cliché that ought to be revised today because, to be fair, the outward proselytizing endeavours of art museums should be recognized. Even some decades ago, when windowless museographic white cube bunkers prevailed, artistic interconnections with the outside world were not disregarded. Earlier precedents may also be traced back throughout the entire development of public art galleries up to the eighteenth century. This is the thrust of this book, a fractured narrative which covers different times and paradigms whereby monumental artworks were employed to landmark the

4

Introduction

thresholds of museums, operating as artistic ‘appetizers’ of the cultural feast to be served indoors. The present infatuation for public art interventions in urban environs might seem a typical novelty of our museums of contemporary art, though it simply constitutes the latest stage in a long historical process. I have strived here to offer a brief account which, in many ways, complements and elaborates on my previous book, The Museums of Contemporary Art: Notion and Development, whose original Spanish version was published in 2008 – the French and English translations were respectively issued in the ensuing two years and the Turkish translation came out in 2016. The aforementioned volume was also structured around what Foucault called episteme shiftings: its two parts respectively tackled the successive emergence, rise and subsequent crisis of the Parisian model of the Musée du Luxembourg in the nineteenth century and of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the twentieth century. Both institutions appear again here as influential study cases because they remodelled former paradigms of heritage interaction around museums at play in great art metropolises. But new trends were not only set by the leading museum capitals. In fact, if I were to choose one sole instance as a turning point in this narrative, my favourite would be the modest Museum of Calais where Rodin’s Burghers stood in front of its facade, decorating the square in the years between the First and Second World Wars (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Facade of the Municipal Museum of Calais with Rodin’s monument to the Burghers (Postcard ca. 1930)

Introduction

5

It is a widespread fallacy to consider this monument the origin of the removal of pedestals from modern sculptures and to attribute this merit to Rodin. In fact, the plinth was not totally eliminated, nor did the famous sculptor clearly intend to have his work placed in that particular position. It was a posthumous tribute paid to him by his most fervent admirers, who were determined to see Rodin consecrated as the precursor of such innovative presentations; in particular certain museum officials, such as Léonce Bénédite, who was the first to implement this policy of pedestal-free statues in front of the Musée Rodin in Paris. That innovation would later be endorsed by the Museum Committee in Calais, amongst others. Rodin’s public reception by and around museums thus played a crucial role in the pivotal position given to him in the history of modern art, which is why he has received consistent attention throughout this volume, though not playing a leading role in any one section of the book. The great French sculptor is mentioned in every chapter, yet always in a paradoxical sense, because his work never fully identifies with any of the models of urban interrelation between museums and public art described here. Rodin may not be easily pigeonholed, as he represents both the culmination of classical tradition and the beginning of boldly modern innovations; everything about him seems double-edged, unquestionably adding to his allure. In this sense, this might perhaps be a highly ‘Rodinian’ book, constantly adopting a dual approach: all three parts are arranged in pairs of chapters which are intertwined with other subsequent pairs. This division of argument strives to adopt the so-called sequential development in ‘nested-package format’, to use the expression coined by Sam H. Ham, one of the world’s leading experts on heritage interpretation, whose recommendations I have tried to follow by dividing each ‘sub-topic’ into approximately three epigraphs. Let us begin at the beginning. Elements of public art flaunted in courts, piazzas, streets and gardens near museums from the origins of those institutions often shaped a well-defined urban network of heritage so close to the museums that they could well be labelled ‘paramuseal’, emulating the ‘paranarrative’ conceptualized by Mieke Bal as a sideline discourse (Bal, 2002: 281). In psychosocial terms, this urban ornament would act as a parallel encasing, comparable to para-texts we read on the flaps or back covers of books. It served as a delicious starter in anticipation of the refined banquet the collections offered indoors, or as an ersatz of that highbrow ingestion, supplementing the meagre cultural diet of those who never crossed the threshold. This is the topic dealt with in Part I: namely the conglomerate created by the first European museums and the monuments surrounding them in the process of configuring ‘art districts’ whose identification as such was propagated through the typical vistas depicted in drawings, paintings, prints and photographs. Chapter 2 examines classical monuments – ancient and modern – flanking access to the early public museums located in fashionable districts. Locations which attracted elegant in-site/off-site promenading were evoked by quaint Romantic or Neoclassical views – more or less

6

Introduction

realistic or idealized – which, unreliable as they may be in terms of historical testimony, serve as iconic evidence of cultural paradigms at work at the time within the public sphere. Postcards from the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth are the historical source basically referred to in chapter 3, focusing on monuments to artists, a new typology of public art but not in terms of their conception; they were often highly traditional and classical to the point of emulating in some cases ancient equestrian statues. The major innovation introduced by the images of great artists was that these would often be positioned in piazzas and gardens close to art museums. They did not necessarily advertise the strong points of the collection indoors but publicized their most revered artists, as those museums and monuments embodied, above all, collective memory for posterity. Or, to put it in the words of Foucault and of postmodern museologists, public monuments and museums joined forces to instruct and acculturate citizens, exalting common ideals of heritage and civic values. To this end, postcards dedicated to museums and monuments or other icons from art districts worthy of such photographic accolades played an influential role. The allure of these cultural clusters was clearly not only based on such architectural and monumental junctions of civic heritage but also on the glamour of their location. This is the main argument of the second part of the book, where museological and public art considerations are subsidiary to questions of city planning, particularly significant as fascinating historical mental ideals, regardless of their imperfect empirical materialization. Urban utopias are therefore the starting point of chapter 4, dedicated to some issues I have been studying since I graduated Art History and had the chance to stay for six months with a scholarship at the Spanish Academy in Rome, where the topical oft-repeated ‘Sermon on the Mount’ grumbled about how difficult it was to attract masses of visitors and critics to the exhibitions or other events held there due to its location on the Janiculum Hill. Our only consolation was that it was even harder for guests to reach the American Academy and the Finnish Institute in Rome, also located on the Janiculum but farther uphill. I was convinced that such a raised position, in line with the historical tradition of Mount Akademos in Athens, had the purpose of socially isolating those working there in order to make us focus on our research and on sharing our work with other artists and researchers within that community, I later learnt that, apart from all this, its founders may have been influenced by a nineteenth-century reinterpretation of the Mouseion. This would eventually lead to the ideal of the Stadtkrone or city crown amongst German utopian planners in the early twentieth century. Following that cultural trend, other modern museums gradually broke away from the art system existing within historical city centres. Used as attractions to make headway for urban expansion on natural sites, museums were set in peripheral parks or even in remote rural spots. The subsequent chapter tackles this matter, considering the suggestive historical association between museums and public art in natural surroundings which in principle seemed

Introduction

7

to buttress the classical idea of the art/nature fusion, though at the height of the Cold War the double buffer of avant-garde sculptures and amenable meadows commonly became tantamount to the territorial expansion of the most prototypical modern Western museums. On some occasions these idyllic projects disastrously failed; yet even where results were good, those liminary sites could be referred to as heterotopias, as any location separated or distinct from the habitual public space should be considered as such, according to Foucault. The vanishing of those remote modern chimeras and the postmodern return of museums to the urban fabric is discussed in the third part of the book. The fifth chapter begins by analyzing the centripetal propensity of so-called open air museums, a term which could be misleading because, ever since their inception – at first ethnological recreations or archaeological sites and later sculpture collections displayed in public spaces – some of their facilities were always under roof, even if only under a bridge, such as the controversial Museo de Escultura de la Castellana in Madrid. Yet it is also true that from the 1980s onwards, many sculpture collections were set under no cover whatsoever, becoming proper open air museums in the literal sense of the term, a nomenclature used by their founders to stress both the utopia of a wall-less museum and their commitment to didacticism. It also involved a terminological choice to position themselves alongside specific cultural trends, in contrast to the so-called sculpture parks, a more frequent designation in the Anglosphere. What’s in a name? Juliet rhetorically wondered when she found out her lover’s surname was Montague. Parodying Shakespeare’s famous line, an epigraph here reviews some outdoor art collections at the turn of the millennium presented under the name ‘museum’. Many other instances could likely be added, though they would not be entirely relevant other than as incarnations of a fantastic museum ideal eventually embodied by the ‘virtual museums’ of public art. Finally, the last chapter analyzes another recent ideal which defends the expansion of the museum’s sphere of action into its surroundings and vice versa. Three main aspects may be differentiated: as opposed to the ‘pastoral’ aesthetic buffer of modern museums, a conceptual revolt primarily emerged questioning approaches within what was branded ‘institutional critique’, its chief targets and favourite settings being museums and other temples of the arts, which have often enthusiastically hosted not only indoor but also outdoor critical displays. Its antithesis could be found in the populist postmodern return to figurative monumental sculpture, no longer necessarily for patriotic purposes but as a form of brand awareness: contemporary art commissions became attractive publicity icons for museums, turning them into the flagships of urban regeneration. A combination of both principles should result in the development of an ideal inspiring and somehow interconnecting our museums, public art and city planning. In fact, some illustrative instances already exist, though none of them can be considered an irreproachable panacea for our times, just as those of former times were not perfect models either.

8

Introduction

This retrospective vision of previous historical phases emerged in light of the present belief in blurring the boundaries between museums and urban spaces. But most frequently the central characters of this tendency today are temporary exhibitions and interventions, while this book focuses on enduring outdoor art ensembles. Another innovative perspective in this analysis consists of highlighting the role consistently played by museums and public art in the physical and psychological shaping of ‘cultural districts’. Writing at the edge of disciplines, I have tried to extend museology beyond museum walls.

Part I

Monuments on the fringes of museums

2

Art districts in the visual culture of the Enlightenment and Romanticism

When Arthur C. Danto proposed the concept of ‘the artworld’ in the 1960s, traditional theories of art, pondering its appreciation in terms of aesthetic quality, were superseded by explanations about the intellectual identification of something as art. Very ordinary stuff could be turned into art by the artworld, proclaimed Danto’s 1981 book, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Transposing such theory in urban terms, perhaps it is time to consider as well the transmutation of common places into ‘art districts’. That designation is usually employed to promote as tourist destinations some urban areas bustling with artists, art establishments and, of course, art. Yet again, the concept is an intellectual construction. Long before the notion was invented, a special magnetism had always been enjoyed by some city districts marked with the glamour of art. That was the case of the first museums and the monuments placed on their thresholds, a new socio-cultural stage capturing public imagination, as attested by the picturesque vistas produced by some artists, some of which have been used here as illustrations for the survey of the most important examples that emerged by the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, in different art capitals. Initially, they were associated with the central quarters, traditional seats of power, as described in the first section of this chapter, while the second is devoted to examples of urban expansion where the attraction of museums and monuments or other amenities lured artists, tourists and zealously committed culture-seekers. Throughout history, museums and monuments have shared much in common: they were both born out of an affirmation of collective memory for posterity.1 Thus, museums and monuments have frequently been associated together. Effigies of gods, heroes or kings were often placed as ‘monumental’ landmarks in the middle of a rotunda or along galleries within the first museums open to the public during the Enlightenment. Likewise, the exterior interconnection between urban and museum space would be marked by statues with similar themes and magnitudes, presiding over visual perspectives or flanking roads and pathways. This ancient fascination for plazas, porticoes, galleries or terraces teeming with statues had always been present in European literature, inspiring visual artists of all periods, from the great historical masters to the modern metaphysical paintings of Giorgio De Chirico,

12 Monuments on the fringes of museums whose pictures feature prominently classical urban perspectives dominated by ancient sculptures publicly displayed on pedestals. To a large extent, these cultural clichés are still in force, sinking their roots in remote times. From the origins of museums, nearby courtyards, gardens, plazas, streets and alleyways in great historical cities showed elements of public art as landmarks of symbolic distinction for neighbourhoods that could be described in modern terms as ‘cultural districts’. Indeed, the term mouseion etymologically refers to Greek temples in honour of the Muses located in amenable gardens decorated with fountains and statues. This monumental decoration in honour of deities protective of letters, sciences and the arts was profuse in the renowned Mouseion of Alexandria, both inside the large library and in the corridors, yards, porticoes or other walkways used for peripatetic tuition. Both kinds of inner spaces, either for sedentary use or for strolling, were adorned with sculptures, but they also decorated the facade and adjacent urban sites, just as pylons, obelisks and sphinxes would pave the way in front of Egyptian temples. The towering statues of the Mouseion were the most emblematic symbols dominating the skyline of the greatest culture capital in the Hellenistic world (Bonaretti, 2002: 65). In this manner was decorated and demarcated with political or religious symbols in antiquity any enclosure of restricted public access, around which the faithful gathered or meandered, gazing at the surrounding statues. In the Roman forum, baths, theatres, circuses or other public site monuments also commemorated deities, notables and even mythological or literary characters. Emulating such historical precedents, humanistic literature would take for granted sculptural monuments inside/outside assumed archetypes of any so-called museum, which scholars considered in three senses: a collection of extraordinary specimens, a building designed to host activities involving sciences and the arts or a monumental temple/memorial.2 The ideal museum, whatever its conception, used to be imagined with monumental statues on the facade and gardens or in the adjacent streets and squares, and it is not easy to ascertain whether they were considered as urban adornment leading in from the outside or as an expansion of the collection colonizing outer spaces. It was likely both functions at the same time insofar as this monumental mission combined in the imagination of scholars iconographic significance and patrimonial value. Inspired by this utopian literature or not, collections of art and antiquities were displayed in galleries imitating the typical monuments of avenues and squares in the city, while its outer contours were also landmarked with valuable heritage. Outdoors, paintings or other delicate materials ceded the primacy to sculptures for their greater resistance to the elements, and copies were often used for this monumental mission instead of original ancient statues. Yet the architecture of palaces or churches established no drastic separation between heritage treasures guarded within and those displayed outside, inasmuch as some pieces usually kept indoors were often used in open

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air ceremonials, while boundary crosses or statues of saints and rulers outdoors landmarked country roads and urban streets leading inside the sites of Ancien Régime power. Similarly, there would be many examples of interchangeability regarding art heritage distributed through public spaces and inside palatial interiors of the Enlightenment when the first museums were opened to the public.3 Even in ideological and social terms, we can consider together, as a unique cultural ensemble, the collections displayed within those museums and their monumental surrounds because they shared a mixture of public praise and educative purposes and sought a common goal: instructing or, to put it in the words of postmodern museologists, disciplining citizens (Hooper-Greenhill, 1989). During the Enlightenment, haptic/optic access to spheres of power was gradual and part of hierarchical relationships with subjects. That experience was marked by spatial and visual protocols, delimiting intermediate zones of intersection inside/outside the edifices of the mighty, who also projected their dominion in the very hierarchical setting of Neoclassical public spaces and monuments.4 Monumental decoration was framing, both indoors and outdoors, a spatial stage for social decorum, linked to polite manners. This particularly applied to semi-public spaces at the intersection between urban and private spheres, such as royal parks, palace patios, porticoes or other courtly areas, access to which was gradually opened during the Enlightened Despotism, often implementing protocol filters or other psycho-environmental barriers. In the gradual opening of stately heritage to citizens, a crucial role was played by the gardens, squares, streets, passages and courtyards on the fringes of the first museums of art and archaeology, also adorned with classic statues, which shaped a pre-museum urban network in some capitals. The subsequent musealization of many royal or aristocratic galleries marked a nodal point in the history of the social usufruct of art; but visiting them was still understood as a concession emanating from the top and often revoked unpredictably or regulated by very limited opening times and conditions of visit, especially in some rooms where not everyone could enter. It ought to be remembered that visits to the first museums and galleries were then limited to a few and surrounded by strict etiquette, regulated timetables and terms of admission always at the lords’ discretion. Drunkards, prostitutes, people in rags or anyone suspicious-looking were vetoed, as were children, who were seen as a potential hazard or nuisance. On the other hand, high-ranking personalities, scholars and artists usually enjoyed more favourable conditions of visit because they were considered their natural public. While access to eighteenth-century museums was socially segregated – some would merely catch a glimpse from the outside while others could actually go inside – the rituals of visits indoors were also socially filtered and controlled. Callers would typically have to follow, as part of a group, the rapid pace and explanations of a guide who would expect a tip in return. Only special visitors, such as scholars or artists, could enjoy the privilege of viewing for

14 Monuments on the fringes of museums themselves, though permission was needed to take notes or to sketch, which was specifically prohibited in some palace galleries.5 One would walk around as a guest in someone else’s house, at the gracious concession of the owners who would only occasionally turn up to welcome a distinguished visitor but whose portraits and those of their ancestors were permanently and symbolically present in effigies, heraldry and other ornaments inside and outside of such complex semiosphere (Eco & Pezzini, 2014). Stunning panoramas and the pleasure of momentarily enjoying the stately halls undoubtedly added to the allure of the gallery for social parvenus. Nonetheless, most commoners had to be content with being allowed access to the gardens, courtyards and other areas on the ground floors peopled by servants. Thus, despite the growing consideration of certain historical treasures as common heritage of the nation deserving collective usufruct, their public enjoyment was still regulated by discriminating protocols which, in that rigidly stratified society, were also matched by hierarchically arranged urban districts. Only with the passage of time did some museums and galleries gain separated distance from royal palaces and court buildings while still remaining part of elitist cultural hubs. Following the example of ancient Alexandria, the first museums used to be in the neighbourhood of academies and libraries, or even shared with them the same building, as they were destined to the same spectrum of users. But there were, in and outside these temples of highbrow culture, other civic masterpieces that anyone could see. Moreover, close to such genteel amenities thrived recurrently a vast offering of art for the consumption of the entire social spectrum: open air exhibitions of prints and pictures, stall peddlers of antiques and books, buskers, puppeteers or acrobats and colourful public festivals that enlivened urban epicentres, quite often at the very door of the first museums.6 From then on, a modern art system would arise which prompted fertile synergies between public art and museums in some culture capitals. This cultural amalgamation produced a modern microcosm constituting the breeding ground for a critical mass, gradually formed by the interplay of opinion trends in the contact zones across different levels of stratification and social consumption of art. That should be an aspect to be incorporated into the concept of the ‘public sphere’ defined by Jürgen Habermas, referring to the cafes, clubs or salons of Paris and London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where reading aloud from newspapers and magazines propitiated exchanges of opinions among very diverse patrons. Unfortunately, the German thinker was less interested in visual culture and the social interrelations provided by it in the age of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, a fascinating subject that has not yet been much exploited by art historians. But the truth is that, both inside and outside museums and exhibitions, the contemplation of artworks also served as a backdrop for all sorts of encounters and confrontations: a heteroclite public life swarmed around, crisscrossing gazes and assessments produced from a range of tastes and ideologies (Rottenberg, 2002; Carrier, 2006: 210; Barrett, 2011: 84).

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2.1 Classical statues and museums in the urban epicentres of art capitals Beyond their aesthetic values, the monumental statues of gods, kings or heroes that landmarked the surroundings of cultural districts were also political milestones. In some cases, historical monuments of public art would arouse strong patriotic feelings of collective heritage: this was well noted by Pope Sixtus IV in 1471 when he ‘made restitution’ to the people of Rome of four celebrated bronze statues – amongst them The Capitoline Wolf – up until then kept at his Lateran Palace – the house of the papacy, medieval heir to Imperial Rome – wherefrom they were transferred to the Capitol, their earliest origin, to which they returned as civic icons of the Renaissance of Rome.7 They decorated a square redesigned by Michelangelo, placing in the middle the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius – for centuries considered to be a portrait of the first Christian emperor, Constantine – later complemented by other ancient artworks. Thus, when the Capitoline Museum opened in 1734, it was preceded by a pre-museal heritage whose centre was that riding figure, flanked by the great statues of Castor and Pollux from a temple of the Dioscuros in Circus Flaminio on both sides of the access steps, while the portrait of a sitting Minerva as Dea Roma closed the axial perspective. Other ancient sculptures complemented such monumental decoration, some of them sheltered under the inner porticoes and courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. These included the head, foot and hand of a colossal statue of Constantine, still today a favourite icon in tourist photographs of Rome but also depicted in innumerable artworks, including a celebrated drawing by Henry Füssli (Kunsthaus Zürich). Less known, but more eloquent as evidence of social interaction at the museum’s doors, is a drawing made in 1759 by Charles-Joseph Natoire, then director of the French Academy in Rome, bearing testimony of a curious variety of people in the museum forecourt. Under a porch supported by columns, some elegant connoisseurs stare admiringly at different art attractions: one, kneeling, examines the ancient statues, another is captivated by a drawing young artist – possibly installed there to sell his work to rich travellers on their Grand Tour – whereas a third visitor by an Egyptian piece seems to be looking to a woman featured in the background, out in the open air, taking water with her pitcher from the Marforio fountain (Figure 2.1). This ancient monument displaying a colossal allegory of some aquatic deity was one of the so-called ‘talking statues’ of Rome, traditionally used by popular culture as well as by sardonic pundits to express their slander on the powerful means of graffiti or posters stuck there.8 It had been discovered in the forum and installed as a public fountain in the Capitol Hill, where it was moved through different locations until, in the mid-seventeenth century, it found its definitive home just in front of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, in a courtyard of the Palazzo Nuovo. This would become an extension to the headquarters of the Capitoline Museum after Clement XIII’s

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Figure 2.1 Charles Natoire: Artists drawing in the inner court of the Capitoline Museum, Rome (Paris, Louvre) Photo © RMN-Michel Urtado

acquisition of the Albani collection, yet many ancient artworks could not be installed indoors. About one hundred archaeological pieces were located in public areas on the ground floor with unrestricted access to all – only at night would they be closed behind the iron railing at the entrance from which they could still be glimpsed – whereas a timetable and more restricted conditions applied to the upper floors inside the museum. Upstairs, the masterpieces of the papal collection were on display for the expert eyes of artists, scholars and travellers, but the antiquities in the courtyard and other outdoor spaces in the museum thresholds constituted a picturesque backdrop for new settings of greater social mixture, as shown in Natoire’s drawing. A similar scene under the same portico is represented in a later drawing by Hubert Robert titled A Draftsman in the Capitoline Gallery (ca. 1763, Musée de Valence). The figure sketching on a piece of paper becomes the central character, surrounded by pensive scholars, a wet nurse with a baby and even a scraggy dog: they all look towards the artist, forming an appreciative circle that resembles those scenarios propitiating fortuitous encounters and exchanges referred to by Habermas as the birthplace of modern public sphere. Such casual confluences of different social classes were less

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viable inside the museum, as children and animals were not admitted, and only women of well-bred stock would dare come indoors, where visitors were conveniently accompanied by people of similar social status.9 Thus, in the visual culture of Neoclassicism, this preamble of the museum was at the same time interlocking with the urban public sphere and working as a triage position where different levels in the consummation of art were sorted. The select audience who went up to the interior ascended to an upper position in terms of gaze politics, as they were not only able to see inside some rooms filled with patrician heritage but also were even allowed a privileged view of the city, if they looked outside from the palatial windows. Taking the cue from Christian Metz, Martin Jay and other theorists of ‘scopic regimes’, this fascinating argument can be better developed in further examples. Another comparable urban epicentre, in terms of both historical importance and historic heritage, was the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, with its accumulated assortments of famous statues, which were also considered collective cultural relics and served as public ornaments and political symbols. There as well, some of these sculptures found shelter in an atrium, the Loggia dei Lanzi, a Gothic portico originally built in Florence’s main square to hold citizen assemblies, which gained new political symbolism when the Republic was suppressed and Cosimo I de Medici turned its upper part into a terrace where the ducal family could stand to preside over public performances or other events taking place in the piazza, while he installed under this porch some of his most precious sculptures of his collection: Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini and The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. In terms of both function and architecture, this portico worked as an extension of the famous Galleria degli Uffizi and the Vasari Corridor built by order of Cosimo I as annexes to the Palazzo Vecchio. Yet as a public space for socialization and housing important monuments, this porch was also a continuation of the main city square, decorated as well with famous monumental sculptures, including a posthumous equestrian portrait of Duke Cosimo himself. On top of the elevated horse, his gaze would symbolically dominate the square forever, as the duke and his successors had done in real life, sometimes discretely looking outside from the windows or peeking over the balcony over the loggia when they wanted to be seen. In many ways, the elites marked from the top their visual domain, a privilege now extended to the people of taste visiting the gallery of the Uffizi, whose scopic dominance further enhanced its attraction for refined audiences, though their gazing rituals were initially very segregated inside. When it opened to the public in 1769, conditions of access to the collection were not equal for all, as some rooms with nudes were vetoed to women and children.10 This was a curious restriction as there were so many monumental nudes in the neighbourhood, both on Piazza della Signoria and in the Loggia dei Lanzi: Michelangelo’s David, Cellini’s Perseus or The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna are usually interpreted as political allegories (Even, 1991), but no one can overlook their voluptuous sensuality. Such

18 Monuments on the fringes of museums a monumental display in the immediate vicinity was another example of the fruitful synergies between public art and museums, whose combination turned the main urban epicentre of Florence into a meeting point for all sorts of publics, not just highbrow culture consumers. It was a favourite setting for popular celebrations or other street attractions aimed at the entire social spectrum: peddlers of prints and books, travelling musicians, puppeteers or mountebanks. This is vividly pictured in a beautiful painting by Giuseppe Zocchi, Piazza della Signoria in Florence (private collection), where the populace attends street shows while elegant gentlemen admire the monuments, but there are also numerous human groups portrayed in conversation, many of them standing in the shade, especially under the Loggia, where a crowd has found shelter around the statues. The lively multitudes that used to frequent this Gothic portico could not pass unnoticed to the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty: they fostered the Uffizi Gallery but at the same time continued to increase the collection of Medici statues under the Loggia dei Lanzi. A polite deference of an enlightened court which, in the absence of new great achievements, counted its glory on their inherited cultural riches, some of which they wished to share with all citizens, even with those who were not too interested in visiting art museums. In 1789, when Great Duke Peter Leopold had some ancient sculptures brought from Villa Medici in Rome to the Loggia in Florence, some indignant voices were raised in the Papal State against that cultural spolium. But this only made these antiques all the more valued by Tuscan people who highly appreciated them because they represented the Marzocco – the heraldic lion that is a symbol of Florence – and six graceful matrons – these were five Sabines which had already been displayed in the Giardino delle Statue of Cardinal della Valle in Rome before being purchased and installed in the Pincio arcades, along with another statue of a Germanic woman identified as Thusnelda, whose fate remained forever linked to the others. Some years later more sculptures were added, both here and in the portico of the Uffizi.11 Thus, they continued to thrive in a public space on the fringes of the museum, propitiating heteroclite reunions in the vicinity of great masterpieces (Figure 2.2). The Loggia dei Lanzi o della Signoria never ceased to be a place for encounters, frequently pictured in vedutisti paintings and prints.12 Even today this space could be qualified as paramuseal in the dual sense of the term, as the portico is within the perimeter of the Uffizi and is almost like a museum – as all the original statues are preserved in situ under the arches of this Florentine stoa, while most of the monuments in the piazza have been replaced by copies. Another similar example, created during the Enlightenment as an area for interaction between the public space and the museum, was the sculpture collection Statuario Pubblico of Venice, in the heart of the city (Favaretto, 1997). Open since 1596 before the Biblioteca Marciana, next to Piazza San Marco, it had always been highly frequented by admirers of Greek sculptures, which had been the founding nucleus of the ever-expanding

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Figure 2.2 Unknown author: Piazza della Signoria (Florence, Fond. Cassa di Risparmio)

collection. In the year 1795, the hall was full to bursting with antiquities. Curator Jacopo Morelli and his sculptor friend Antonio Canova then proposed to take some of the marble statues outside. The latter produced a couple of designs envisaging some statues on the entrance steps and in the open air; none of this was ever to reach completion, as Napoleon’s troops entered the city in 1797 and sacked the collection.13 That great project came to nothing. Therefore, in this account of the interrelation between public art and museums in Neoclassical city centres, the culminating point must be Paris, then Europe’s emerging cultural capital. The French court had also founded a typical museum of enlightened despotism, surrounded by a conglomerate of paramuseal heritage, in the palatial site of the Luxembourg park: its monumental gardens had been opened to the public and then, between 1750 and 1780, visitors were admitted to the royal gallery of paintings, though under very restrictive conditions (McClellan, 1994). Curiously, French cultural policy gave greater public accessibility to the art exhibitions in the Louvre’s Salon Carré and its neighbourhood, whose buildings and parks were both a crowded forum and another lively artistic cluster.14 It was the epicentre of many debates and patrimonial policies at the end of the Old Regime, which prompted the royal administration to decide that the gallery of paintings should be installed there to be publicly visitable, but the plans were delayed and only fulfilled by the Republic. The opening of the national museum took

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Monuments on the fringes of museums

place on 10 August 1793, culminating in a multitudinous festive ceremony through the streets of Paris in which six great republican monuments were also inaugurated.15 That was the end of the traditional restrictions on the socio-spatial accessibility to historical heritage in the palatial complex of the Louvre and the Tuileries, declared patrimony of the whole nation. As in the rest of the city, both inside and outside these palaces, the heraldic emblems and royal effigies were removed or covered, but unlike other parts of Paris where some architectural, sculptural and urban adornments would be prey of uncontrolled revolutionary vandalism, authorities remained ever vigilant of public monuments in this district, especially next to the Tuileries Palace, which acquired special political significance, becoming in 1793 the headquarters of the National Convention. Its surroundings turned out to be the favourite stage to new models of public art exalting republican ideals.16 Monuments extolling the new regime and its ideology were what zealots demanded; they did not look kindly on a museum located inside a grand royal palace, a gallery filled with enemy icons of religious or monarchic piety and large goldframed paintings.17 However, not only was the dynastic collection within the Louvre nationalized but also the sculptural ensemble which had been partially opened to the public outdoors in the nearby Tuileries garden, one of the many royal parks adorned with historical statuary. Some baroque artworks of unequivocal monarchic iconography were removed, while classical statues from Versailles and other royal domains were brought to this garden to make them accessible to the people of Paris. Prevalence was given to ancient works or historical copies of Greco-Roman sculptures, such as the Arrotino or the Dying Gladiator brought from Marly, the Borghese Gladiator from Fontainebleau, Capitoline Urania from Sceaux or other venerable classical vestiges, much to the delight of many neoclassical authors of guides describing the new attractions of the French capital. But not just well-travelled and learnt visitors could enjoy these artworks: the gardens were open to the general public and became a new focal point enlivened by attractive cafes, concerts or games under close police surveillance. A penalty of two years’ imprisonment was decreed for anyone damaging or mutilating the masterpieces displayed at this location turned into an open air museum, access to which was permitted to anyone, no matter his or her dress, though it was a requisite that visitors should wear the tricolour rosette (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 1: 72–73). Thus, these courtly antiquities and sculptures would now only be admired by patriots boasting their unconditional support for the new regime, inasmuch as only they could interpret the artworks in tune with the predominant ideology. Meanwhile, nobody objected to open air displays of other monumental pieces from the Ancien Régime lacking clear political meaning. For instance, one example can be the Michelangelo’s Slaves, historically placed in niches on either side of one of the entrances to the courtyard at Écouen Castle

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and in a portico when they were part of the Richelieu collection; as soon as they were incorporated into the national heritage in August 1794, it was decided to place immediately one on each side of the entrance to the national museum (Cantarel-Bresson, 1981, vol. 1: 83). In September of that same year, the museum demanded to the authorities that a huge round medieval carved stone with scenes of classical mythology be brought from the basilica of Saint-Denis to be installed in front of the Louvre, at the Jardin de l’Infante (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 455–456). This was a curious continuity of courtly cultural traditions, for the presence of sculptures in that garden had been regular in the Ancien Régime.18 Conversely, they hesitated on whether to install by the Louvre other monuments ideologically inconvenient, which the museum ultimately decided to hide from public gaze. The republican administration of culture had suggested placing at the Jardin de l’Infante some of the remains of the monument to Henry IV by Giambologna and Pietro Tacca which had been demolished in the Place Dauphine, in particular four Slaves made in bronze for the pedestal by Renaissance sculptor Pierre Francqueville. Nonetheless, on 20 October 1794, the members of the commission of curators decided to select the most deserving pieces and to put them into storage, arguing that other monuments coming from Fontainebleau were to be installed in that garden.19 Then a project for a sculpture garden by the museum entrance was presented in November, designing a hemicycle of statues around a medieval fountain from Saint-Denis.20 Yet this enormous round medieval carved stone with scenes of classical mythology remained at the Jardin de l’Infante until it was vandalized, despite the watchful eye of the police. The disregard of lay people for old heritage seems to be the topic evoked in a painting by Hubert Robert dated to this period (Paris, Musée Marmottan), which portrays some children playing with a dog on that medieval fountain while other kids push the antiquities surrounding it; some ancient statues are seen lying on the ground while a lady unconcernedly walks past. But the value of this picture as visual evidence should not be trusted; likely this is another of the Pre-Romantic fantasies of the painter, as exaggerated as his views of the ruined Louvre. Some of these troubled monuments were successfully claimed by the Museum of French Monuments, a shelter created to save national heritage from vandalism, which was accessible to the public from 1795 to 1816 in the former monastery of the Discalced Augustinians. Its curator, Alexandre Lenoir, created a strict chronological circuit inside the building; however, visitors were allowed to stroll at ease around the courtyard and garden, where statues and monuments were distributed in the open air amongst trees in an evocative Romantic taste.21 Nevertheless, for security reasons, Lenoir was not in favour of installing the collections outdoors in public gardens or streets and successfully reclaimed for his museum some masterpieces stored out around the Louvre, especially those with Christian or royal iconography. Different was the case of bronzes or marbles with classical motifs and most

22 Monuments on the fringes of museums particularly if they were, or seemed to be, venerable copies of ancient statues. At that time Roman antiquities were particularly appreciated, and in Paris this taste was loaded with added political symbolism. For a regime inspired by the Roman republic and which would soon evolve into Caesarism, the best pieces from Roman art belonged to the Louvre Museum, and when there was no more place for them indoors, they had to be displayed at its entrance. This was confirmed in August 1795 when a solemn decision was made, declaring that it was one of the museum’s functions to decorate its access with statues, ceramic artworks and other large objects in the open air to give its surroundings ‘une décoration analogue et digne des chefs d’oeuvre qu’il renferme’ (Cantarel-Bresson, 1981, vol. 1: 214).22 In charge of these plans to embellish the accesses of the museum might have been Hubert Robert, then one of the five members of the commission of curators of the museum (Faroult, 2016). His personal involvement in this endeavour is evidenced by a picture he painted representing the entrance of the building flanked by some monumental treasures of the collection installed on high pedestals (Figure 2.3).23 A truthful testimony or yet another picturesque vision of his imagination?

Figure 2.3 Hubert Robert: Entrance to the Musée Napoléon (Private collection)

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The curators intended to build a portico outside the museum to house the external collection of statues. But they were so overwhelmed with arriving artworks that there was no time to execute their ambitious project. At least we have, as evidence of it, two idealized drawings (Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, n° inventaire: RF 29771 & RF29891). They are practically identical, though one has been attributed to Charles de Wailly while Hubert Robert is considered the author of the other, with coloured touches, dated 2 November and 23 November 1795. Whatever the case, the fact is that nobody ever built such a monumental passageway, which would have been a pioneering example in the history of Parisian arcades.24 Thus, several antiquities were displayed in the open air on the gardens leading to the museum entrance by the facade next to the Seine. Some of the antiques from the booty conquered in the campaigns in Italy were set up there too, notably the four bronze horses brought in the summer of 1798 from Saint Mark’s basilica in Venice which remained at the Jardin de l’Infante up until 1802. In 1799 a Roman marble sculpture from the Mazarin collection was also installed in that garden. The statue had been removed during the Republic from the Marly gardens to Versailles: up until then it was known as Agrippina in the Bath, but a more suitable identification was found for the new location in front of the museum, where it would be known as Mnemósine, Mother of the Muses.25 This was a particularly appropriate name to lead the way towards the Museum of Antiquities and the open air museum of the Tuileries, in whose gardens were also installed the nine classical statues of the Muses from Marly. Similarly, when the Museum of Antiquities was inaugurated at the beginning of the new century, some courtyards of the Louvre became open air storage spaces for other archaeological collections, to which further pieces of Napoleonic plunder would be added under the directory. This was also documented by Hubert Robert in his 1801 picture, Artist Drawing Antiquities before the Petite Galerie du Louvre (Paris, Musée du Louvre), where two groups of women, a dog and an absorbed artist contemplate a jumble of classical vestiges amongst which is a version of the renowned Capitoline Furietti Centaur, an ancient Italian copy seized from the Count d’Orsay alongside other sculptures from his palace in Rue de Varenne, notably a fragmented version of Capitoline Antinous or a historical bronze replica of Apollo Belvedere, at whose feet the artist placed a stone plaque with the word museum inscribed in Greek (Figure 2.4). However, despite successive ornamental plans, there were no statues in the largest inner open air courtyard of the Louvre, the Cour Carrée.26 In the interim the Cour du Carrousel, a new esplanade linking the Louvre and the Tuileries, which had been the favourite stage for many Republican ceremonies, attained greater monumental importance at the service of Napoleonic liturgies (Poulot, 2004: 125). The horses from Saint Mark’s were relocated there from 1802 to 1807 on tall plinths, as featured in an anonymous contemporary English print (reproduced in Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986,

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Figure 2.4 Hubert Robert: Artist drawing antiquities in front of the Louvre’s Petite Galerie (Paris, Musée du Louvre) Photo © RMN-Stéphane Maréchalle

vol. 2: 432).27 The ambitious and highly symbolic project of a monumental fountain never came to fruition: the idea was to reuse at its base the Venetian Lion of the Piazetta San Marco, crowned by elements from historical French statuary.28 Those plans intertwining historical and new monuments eventually culminated between 1807 and 1815 when Percier and Fontaine presented Saint Mark’s horses above the Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel, while allegories of France, History, War and Victory were commissioned to occupy those four free podiums along the gate (Bresc-Bautier  & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 220, 365–366, 432–433, 456). The art museum and its surrounding urban space had thus become an emblematic public setting at the service of the emperor, who had his residence in the palace of the Tuileries and used the Louvre like a propagandistic stage, as emphasized since 1803 by its new denomination, Musée Napoléon, and by the mural and sculptural adornments indoors and outdoors, notably a gigantic bust of Bonaparte by Bartolini on the entrance or other statues of national personalities.29 But, to the greater glory of Napoleon, the monumental and ‘iconic’ pre-eminence of the Louvre as an urban complex was

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also to be emphasized in all aspects of the public sphere. Many artists lived and worked inside the palace, around which booksellers or art traders of all kinds, who had undoubtedly contributed as well to the artistic glamour of the neighbourhood, created a paramount ‘cultural district’ frequently featuring in drawings, prints or paintings. Bonaparte expelled them all from there, as Jesus drove out the merchants from the Temple, though the art dealers did not go far, and the refinement of some art shops became even greater than the imposing interior of the Louvre, so they not only became a cultural complement to the museum but also even competed with it as sumptuous temples of the Muses (Labreuche, 2011: 114, 221). After the defeat of Napoleon, the Bourbon Restoration was not a total break; a smooth continuity prevailed in cultural policies, particularly regarding the monumental decoration of the capital: although the equestrian monument to Henry IV in the Pont Neuf was restored, many classical statues requisitioned by the Republic or the Empire continued in the central museum or in its surroundings. Most of that sculptural booty installed in the squares and gardens around the Louvre was kept there by the monarchs, for the citizens’ delight, just as the museum remained open to all. In 1827 Charles X created an extension for antiquities bearing his name inside the Louvre. All the statues from the Louvre gardens and the Tuileries were then registered in the inventory of the museum (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1985: 40). Louis Philippe delimited a plot of land for his private use around the Tuileries Palace, his personal residence, but he continued to adorn the rest of the garden with public sculptures of classical taste. In the gardens of the Luxembourg, some of the historic copies of ancient statues were replaced under his reign by new sculptures with Romantic subjects, though still retaining classical iconographies: the monumental effigies of queens, saints and other illustrious French ladies commissioned from eminent contemporary artists still look like severe Roman matrons. Similar classical models inspired the standing portraits of great men decorating the facades of the Louvre around the Cour Napoleon by order of the Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who also commissioned to erect around the museum equestrian statues of past national leaders, inspired by monuments of Roman emperors riding horses.30 Perhaps the Neoclassical vogue of placing monumental antiquities around museums was already losing momentum, but its influence continued to aesthetically inspire new monuments in these cultural epicentres.

2.2 Museums and monuments as cultural lures for urban expansions The centripetal cultural policies previously described were countered in other capitals by applying similar strategies to expand urban growth. In fact, the gradual public opening of stately palaces and mansions during the Enlightenment also affected suburban parks and game reserves, whose gardens were opened to lay citizens, who could enjoy its natural charms

26 Monuments on the fringes of museums and monuments. Museums with outdoor collections were sometimes the next step, which was often part of grand urban expansions, promoted by social elites. An early example was the Museo Lapidario of Verona, located not in the city centre, which had traditionally been Piazza dei Signori, but close to the Roman amphitheatre, a peripheral area which had become a fashionable spot for promenading and whose urban development reached its climax in 1782 with the inauguration of Piazza Bra, the new symbolic epicentre of Verona ever since. The ancient marbles displayed in the freely accessible front yard of the Teatro Filarmonico were an added attraction to this new district, though the general public enjoyed above all the view of its landscaped botanic garden which, after the Napoleonic sacking, took many years to recover.31 This successful combination of antiquities and nature was even more striking in the British Museum, open to the public in 1759 by the Parliament of London in Montagu House, a suburban mansion with gardens garnishing the West End, then a trendy area for city expansion, at some distance not only from the royal palace but also from the Parliament itself. Neither the neighbourhood nor this mansion nor the museum were initially welcoming to the popular classes, intimidated by this elitist enclave, almost exclusively the domain of a few pundits and patricians where access to other citizens was arduous, despite being the first ‘public museum’ from an administrative point of view. It was open to everyone without payment or tipping, though up to 1810 access required prior booking, approximately fifteen days in advance, through a complicated system admitting fewer than sixty persons a day in very limited opening hours. Trailing behind a fast-walking and fast-talking cicerone in groups of five, visitors were not allowed to stop individually for closer inspection of any item which might have caught their attention (Leahy, 2012: 19–45). Outside, however, the national ownership of the museum was more apparent in practices and symbols because it was very easy to obtain an annual ticket to roam at pleasure in the gardens, which would soon be opened freely to anyone of any age, while children under eight were banned inside the British Museum, where no public lavatories were provided indoors, as they were part of the garden facilities: thus, it was not a precious ‘archaeological garden’ but a user-friendly public precinct, patriotically planted by the turn of the century with over six hundred different botanic species from all over the nation (Caygill, 1981). The marble pieces from the Parthenon were installed in a temporary outbuilding in that public garden from 1817 onwards. This had an immediate aesthetic influence on Neoclassical monuments in the city, branded as ‘the new Athens’. Particularly in Bloomsbury, this trend had an effect on the pastiche of the Erechtheum, with the caryatides before the facade of Saint Pancras New Church, built between 1819 and 1822 in Neo-Greek style, as well as on the friezes of University College. Other nearby cultural attractions included the Russell Institution under whose columns in the portico some antiquities were eventually stored, though sheltered in boxes, unexposed to weather

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or vandalism; exactly the same would happen in the colonnade of Robert Smirke’s grandiose neo-Grecian building for the new headquarters of the national museum and library, which became the focal point wherefrom the Greek revival would spread across the British capital (Jenkins, 1992). The National Gallery was also initially housed in a noble mansion in Pall Mall and was opened to the public in 1824, though it would be subsequently transferred to the newly fashionable Trafalgar Square. Formerly part of the king’s mews, the area was transformed into a citizen agora by two champions of English Neoclassicism: John Nash and William Wilkins. It was the latter who designed the new building which was inaugurated in 1838, as headquarters of both the National Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art. This temple of the Muses, originally intended to stand at the centre of the square, was eventually located on its northern side, yet its monumental domes and porticoes, flights of steps and other classical elements were replicated in other buildings all around the square. Equally grandiloquent and antiquitizing were the sculptures placed in this new urban zone, starting with the historic bronze portrait of Charles I on a horse by Hubert Le Sueur, depicted in the foreground of James Pollard’s painting Trafalgar Square, featuring the National Gallery in the background (The Berger Collection, Denver Art Museum) (Figure 2.5). Nelson’s column was erected in November 1843 in the middle of the esplanade, while the following month George IV’s equestrian statue, a masterwork by Francis Chantrey, was placed after

Figure 2.5 James Pollard: Trafalgar Square, London (The Berger Collection, Denver Art Museum)

28 Monuments on the fringes of museums some hesitations in its current site on a high pedestal, though the square was not opened until May 1844. As in many urban scenes of London’s West End at that time, a socially diverse public is portrayed conversing or strolling along streets of elegant shops. Several pictures, watercolours, drawings or prints attest to the proliferation of art dealers in this new district, whose shop windows were scrutinized by potential buyers as well as peered at by curious passers-by and many down-and-outs who could at least enjoy this form of street culture if nothing else. Further to the west, in Piccadilly, businessman William Bullock had opened, in 1812, the London Museum or Egyptian Hall, while in Adelaide Street, on the other side of Trafalgar Square, stood the Lowther Arcade, where the Adelaide Gallery opened in 1832. People would pay a shilling to see its collection of modern scientific contraptions and innovative examples of recent art. As in the case of the art dealers, these galleries would seek locations close to museums in order to attract customers (Lorente, 2016a). Simultaneously, the combination of museums and monuments as cultural attractions to expand urban epicentres was also promoted in Edinburgh, Birmingham and other British cities. The chosen option there, instead of turning historical manor houses into museums, was to erect new buildings in Neoclassical style and to decorate their surroundings with classicallooking statues, a practice which would also become long-lasting in British territories overseas. Even in countries no longer under British rule, such as in the United States of America, Neoclassicism took off as the official style of the young Republic. Capitols, and other official buildings adopted that style which was also prevalent in the sculptures decorating nearby urban spaces. This style remained in vogue for many years, particularly for academies, colleges, libraries, schools, museums, theatres or other prestigious centres, appropriately complemented by the imposing presence of monumental sculptures. It was a perennial urban-political stereotype in the Western world, whose cultural identity would preponderantly hark back to Greece and Rome. And of course, the most enthusiastic adherents to this paradigm would be the authorities of the young Greek State created after the London Conference of 1832. Two years later, in 1834, Athens was declared the capital of the new State, and its urban expansion in the ensuing decades was articulated along elegant boulevards presided over by Neoclassical statues and buildings to house the university, the academy, the Royal Palace, the Parliament and even some of the first museums, though this was already well advanced in the nineteenth century (Bastea, 2000). All this took place under pro-British rulers and a monarchy established with king Otto, a Bavarian prince of the Wittelsbach dynasty. German culture had already been paying due tribute to this Neoclassical megalomania for a long time and had actually pioneered the construction of museums in the front lines of urban expansion. The earliest precedent

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had been set in Kassel between 1768 and 1779, when the Museum Fridericianum was built by the court architect Simon Louis Ry, who also designed Friedrichsplatz, the new focus of polite social life, whose centrepiece is the monument to its promoter, Frederick II.32 This statue, gazing towards the sculptures of the Muses on top of the museum facade, was unveiled in 1783 in an opening ceremony depicted that year by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder (the painting belongs to the Neue Galerie, Kassel) (Figure 2.6). In other capitals both optic and haptic accessibility of lay people to the palatial collections followed the public opening of court parks and grounds, replete with ensembles of cultural heritage. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had allowed entrance to Belvedere Park in Vienna, decorated with sculptures and fountains, two years before the grand opening in 1781 of the imperial art collection – arranged in schools following the plans of the erudite Christian von Mechel – inside the upper palace, Oberes Belvedere. A similar path would be followed in the case of the regal park and art treasures of Sanssouci in Potsdam, on the western periphery of the Prussian court. Likewise, at that change of the century, the citizens of Stockholm, a capital which had expanded around the port, regained access to the heart of the old town, the island of Stadsholmen, where the royals had established their home. The surroundings of the palace, adorned with parks and sculptures, were accessible to public promenade before the Royal Museum was opened in 1794 in one wing of the building, where precious antiquities were displayed lined along a wall, facing the large windows overlooking the green lawns of the Logården.33

Figure 2.6 Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder: Friedrichsplatz and Museum Fridericianum, Kassel (Neue Galerie, Kassel)

30 Monuments on the fringes of museums As the nineteenth century advanced, the great cities of the Germanic area would bring to their maximum splendour this tactic of urban expansion, marked by museums and monuments. Ludwig I of Bavaria extended Munich towards the north-west building, the Glyptothek and the Museum of Antiquities, designed by his architect, Leo von Klenze, around the new esplanade of Königsplatz – Royal Square – presided by the Propylaea, a triumphal door to celebrate the enthronement in Greece of Ludwig I’s sons.34 Neither the king nor his architect wished any ancient statues to be placed in the centre of the square or in the facades; instead, they did agree on decorating the sculpture museum with eighteen niches for which they commissioned statues portraying deities, royals and ancient artists (Plagemann, 1970: 17; Sheehan, 2000: 66–69). Despite being regularly open to the public via the front gate, the building continued to be a private property of the monarch: through a rear entrance, he and his retinue had direct access to the interior, structured in halls and rotundas profusely decorated, in contrast to the austere Neoclassical exterior. Then the same architect reaffirmed this taste nearby, designing the Alte Pinakothek, whereas the Neue Pinakothek was built in front but following other aesthetic standards, in order to extol Ludwig I as an art patron. The Altes Museum of Berlin was also the flagship of an ambitious urban expansion project promoted by the Prussian Court in the Lustgarten – Recreation Garden – where the Museumsinsel gradually took shape, concentrating most museums in that capital (Gaehtgens, 1987). It was built between 1823 and 1830 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel with hardly any external ornament. Sculptor Friedrich Tieck was commissioned to design the two figures crowning the building, The Dioscuri taming their horses. These were more energetic than those displayed flanking access to the Roman Piazza Campidoglio, but here the Neoclassical architect chose not to place statues in front of the museum entrance (Sheehan, 2000: 78–79). Therefore, the two sculptures added afterwards may not be properly considered architectural decorations as they are detached from the facade. The Amazon Fighting a Panther by August Kiss, erected in 1842 next to the steps, and Albert Wolff’s Lion Hunter, added symmetrically to the other side in 1861, could perhaps more appropriately be considered public monuments erected in late Romanticism. As further additions, they are not featured in the 1832 painting by Heirich Hintze (Berlin, Märchisches Museum), where we can see in front of the Altes Museum the first public monument in the district, a gigantic cup of granite placed in 1831, though the most visible attraction in the square is a modern fountain, whose jet of water was propelled several metres upwards thanks to a steam engine, then located right in the middle of the Lustgarten: in its place an equestrian statue of Friedrich Wilhelm III would be erected in 1871. In this museum’s district, many other equestrian monuments to monarchs of the Hohenzoller dynasty were added during the Second Reich, as well as many other statues on pedestals, sometimes owned by the Nationalgalerie.35

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Little by little, the classic tradition of placing valuable antiquities at the gates of museums was relegated, despite the everlasting prevalence of Neoclassical style for the architectures of the temples of the Muses. There would be no shortage of sculptures on their facades, porticos and peristyles; yet it would no longer be standard practice to display outside authentic ancient statues. Even in the case of recent works installed outdoors, good care was often taken to protect them from weather risks: in Vienna, for example, Emperor Franz I had Canova’s Theseus and the Centaur displayed in a pavilion purposely built between 1820 and 1825 by architect Pietro Nobile imitating a classical Greek temple in the beautiful Volksgarten, a people’s park next to the imperial Hofburg Palace.36 The new museums of the nineteenth century, managed by curators of growing professional zeal, who feared that their collections might be vandalized or damaged outdoors, would sometimes continue the old tradition of installing artworks under the open sky but preferably indoors, within enclosed patios, cloisters and internal gardens. This was the case of the Lapidario Estense of Modena, created in 1818 in the internal cloister of the Albergo delle Arti.37 Exposing antiquities to open air risk was not even considered by the new museums in Naples, despite its Mediterranean climate and the abundance of ancient heritage, which might have justified the continuity of the classical monumental tradition in its streets. In the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Charles of Bourbon had created in his palace the Museo Farnesiano and in Portici the Museo Hercolanese, but then he decided to centralize the royal library along with some of the antiquities from the gardens of Caserta, the art collections from the palace of Capodimonte and the archaeological collections from Pompei and Herculaneum, gathering them in the old baroque Palace of the Viceroy, at the time used for university studies: an urban location diametrically opposed to the city epicentre of that time, called Largo di Palazzo or Forum Reggio, named today Piazza Plebiscito. That transfer has often been imagined as a solemn procession of statues being carried to the museum through the streets of Naples, according to the famous image by Louis-Jean Desprez published to illustrate the Voyage pittoresque à Naples et en Sicile written by Jean-Claude Richard de Saint Non, whose five volumes were published in Paris from 1781 to 1786; but it was again one of those artistic fantasies in fashion at the time, since the transfer was made in a discreet and professional way, using closed boxes sent much later and bit by bit (Haskell & Penny, 1981: 76). Not one archaeological item was placed on the facade when, after many vicissitudes, this Bourbon Museum was finally inaugurated in 1816 by Ferdinand I. Even longer was the delay in the realization of the museum project conceived by the same Charles of Bourbon in Madrid, once crowned as king of Spain. Instead of housing it in his new royal palace, built in Neoclassical style in the site of the old fortress, which would have been the easiest and most regal option, he chose to place it on a meadow at the opposite end of the city, next to the Buen Retiro gardens. He had opened these to the public

32 Monuments on the fringes of museums on the condition that visitors came clean and properly dressed. The equestrian statue of Philip IV, which was to be transferred in the middle of the nineteenth century to the Plaza de Oriente, was still standing in that retired hunting ground and natural reserve, among other patrimonial vestiges of the former reigning dynasty. On the edge of that royal park, on a suburban hill – like mount Akademos in Athens – Charles III promoted the creation of the astronomical observatory, the botanic garden and what was originally intended to be the Museum and Academy of Natural Science. This triangle of Neoclassical buildings formed a ‘Hill of the Sciences’ bizarrely removed from the seats of political, religious and university power (Vega, 2010). The last building was no longer intended for the exclusive use of scientists but was also to be partially opened to public curiosity. Not coincidentally the entrance for visitors overlooked one of the focuses of an ellipse-shaped area known as the Salón del Prado, the centre of a tree-lined boulevard soon to become the new favourite spot for sophisticated citizens to promenade or parade in calashes, from the fountain of Cybele passing by the fountain of Apollo and turning round by the fountain of Neptune to begin the route once more (Reese, 1989; Lopezosa, 1991).38 The mythological iconography of those Neoclassical fountains hinted at Charles III’s policies for the development of agriculture, the governance of overseas territories and the promotion of arts and sciences. But while Neptune, ruling over the water, could have been a divine gatekeeper for a museum designed to display the variety of natural species both in the peninsula and overseas, when Fernando VII eventually inaugurated the building in 1819, after the hazardous period comprising the Napoleonic Wars and the Declaration of Independence in America, that godly figure no longer seemed so appropriate given that the institution’s speciality had changed to become the Museo Real de Pintura y Escultura. This is likely a reason why many artists avoided depicting the fountain of Neptune in their first images of the Paseo del Prado and its brand-new museum. Even Fernando Brambila, formerly so keen on picturesque cascades and sculptures, chose to omit the monumental fountain in his celebrated Vista del Real Museo de Pintura de Madrid (Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional). However, he had no qualms about imagining classical statues adorning the western front of the museum, where he depicted allegoric figures set in niches, statues amongst the columns of the portico and the personifications of Glory and Fame, based on Villanueva’s project which had been redone by his disciple Antonio López Aguado.39 The Prado was opened by Fernando VII in 1819 as the Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture, with its facades appropriately decorated as a ‘temple of the arts’; yet none of the valuable ancient statues owned by the king were placed then outdoors, which was a sensible decision given that children repeatedly threw stones at the plaster sculptures provisionally installed in 1833 to decorate the facade on the occasion of Infanta Isabel’s swearing the oath as heiress to the throne in a nearby church. Court sculptor Ramón Barba was commissioned to decorate the facade of the museum with

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ornamental figures which, besides the classical allegories, gave prominence to a series of portraits of renowned artists.40 In contrast, no sculptures were designed for the monumental decoration of the former Trinidad Calzada convent in the adjacent Atocha Street when it became the venue for a new National Museum in 1838. In other countries during the years of Romanticism, the facades of museums and even nearby gardens, streets and squares were filled with patriotic elements, but public funds in Spain’s treasury were so depleted at the time that very few projects were carried out after the statue of Cervantes was erected in front of Parliament in 1831. Some more instances arose in Paseo del Prado, where the Monumento a los Héroes del 2 de Mayo was inaugurated near the Museo Real de Pintura y Escultura in 1840. The museum director sought to give the monument patriotic continuity indoors where, on the ground floor, he displayed two renowned sculptures on the same topic whose final marble version had been paid for by Fernando VII: La Defensa de Zaragoza by José Álvarez Cubero and Daoiz y Velarde by Antonio Solà. Both works were to be used some years later as public monuments in the surroundings of the main national museums of Madrid. Harsh criticism exploded in newspapers when the marble statue of Daoíz and Velarde was displayed outdoors for the first time in 1847; but instead of demanding professional curatorship for this marble group, many simply questioned the position of the sculpture and ridiculed the disproportionate pedestal, erected in the neighbouring Retiro Park – close to the emplacement today of the monument to Jacinto Benavente. Within three years the fighting figures were returned under the museum roof. That conservationist decision, however, was revoked on political grounds after the revolution of 1868 which saw this monumental portrait of the leaders of the Madrid revolt against Napoleon’s invasion placed once more outside the Prado. In the context of the ideological disputes confronting liberals and conservatives in nineteenth-century Spain, it became a hot issue whether to use such Neoclassical statues of heroes of the Peninsular War as a prelude to the national museum, expanding its contents into public space. Afterwards this policy was continued in the gardens by the Museum of Modern Art, adorned with sculptures from the collection, notably the aforementioned heroic group La Defensa de Zaragoza, which many years later would be installed on the street before the Casón del Buen Retiro, a section of the Prado Museum. Classical taste continued to prevail both in museum architecture and in sculptures set in nearby squares or gardens as ‘peri-museum’, or rather ‘paramuseum’, decoration.41 Beyond the complicated wordplay, the point is that, in both a figurative and a literal sense, the semantic field of museum concepts was expanding in the public sphere with other meanings which should be mentioned here, as they also encompassed, for example, publications of highly diverse contents featuring common people.42 The same designation was sometimes given to imaginary art ensembles or private print collections, often depicting the portraits of prominent historical figures, not always of

34 Monuments on the fringes of museums high rank. This emerging attention to popular and middle-class visual culture inevitably transferred certain values and icons enshrined, both indoors and outdoors, by museum temples. Some even became favourite urban settings for the most significant change in nineteenth-century public statues, as the traditional repertoire of mythological deities, saints, heroes and monarchs was joined by monumental figures representing emerging sociocultural idols. Such was the case of El Prado after the dethronement of Isabel II by the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1868. The Royal Museum and El Retiro park were both nationalized – including as well their entire cultural heritage – when the sculpture of Daoíz and Velarde was again placed outdoors (Figure 2.7). This monument was turned into a revolutionary icon and would henceforth remain a bone of contention within Madrid’s political scene.43 As scholars documenting its various relocations throughout the city have pointed out, the partisan emotions this monument would stir up amongst progressive liberals and republicans rested on the fact that the figures portrayed were no longer ancient heroes or aristocratic statesmen or generals but two petty soldiers who had led the rising of the citizens of Madrid against Napoleon’s tyranny.

Figure 2.7 Statue of Daoiz and Velarde by the facade of the Museo del Prado ca. 1890 (Anonymous photo kindly provided by the Municipal Museum of History, Madrid)

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The coming to prominence of popular and middle classes after the Romantic revolutions had prompted this new public approach, not so elitist, to Europe’s historical past. And this was reflected in the artistic decoration of cities where not only the statues of statesmen or deities and ancestral cult figures proliferated in squares or along principal avenues but also other monuments paying homage to laymen from the sidelines, whose endeavours were considered worthy of enduring public memory, including laborious scientists, writers and artists, whose endeavours were considered worthy of enduring public memory. These monuments would become emblematic public landmarks in cultural districts, often erected against the urban background of the latest museum building which, increasingly detached from court palaces, constituted a reference of the new urban epicentre identified with the middle class. Thus developed the new habit of erecting monumental portraits of great artists in squares and gardens around art museums. El Prado played, as we shall see in the next chapter, a major role in this venture.

Notes 1 The term monument comes from the Latin verb moneo, that means to remember something or to perpetuate a memory, and in this sense it was used from antiquity until the end of the nineteenth century. 2 Amongst humanists this ideal of a ‘museum’ originated in its etymological sense as the temple or dwelling place of Muses, but it increasingly became identified as a teaching complex containing a library and a collection (Findlen, 1989; Fabianski, 1990). 3 During the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, there would be multiple parallelisms, in terms of space and sociability, between leisure promenades outside and inside the museum as an urban cultural phenomenon. The parterres, pergolas and exterior colonnades adorned with statues would correspond to the gleaming galleries flanked by paintings and sculptures, while the ‘tribune’ or central room, where the best of the collection was treasured, had its outdoor equivalent in the exedras and roundabouts of the gardens or courtyards (Loir & Turcot, 2011). 4 Neoclassical urban planning gave great emphasis to the new civic spaces marked by celebrative milestones like triumphal arches or monumental gates and classical temples or pantheons interrelated with other classical monuments inside or outside museums, that also were epiphanies of power (Lorente, 2015a). 5 In Paris, when the French Royal gallery was opened to the public in 1750 at the Palace of Luxembourg, general visits were allowed for only three hours on the two designated days a week; artists enjoyed preferential treatment as they had access on other days and times, though for security reasons painting was strictly prohibited because splashes of paint could spoil the artworks or an original could be replaced with one of its copies (McClellan, 1994). 6 Later on, street jugglers and funfairs would be relegated to the margins of the city, segregated from the polite institutions of highbrow culture (Crow, 1985; Bennett, 1995). 7 At the memorial stone of the transfer, which is preserved inside the Capitoline Museum, Sixtus IV is praised for his immensam benignitatem; however, the Latin word used is not donation but restitution (Fiorio, 2011: 16). Placed in the Capitol Hill, these antiquities took on new political symbolism, whereas in their previous urban location, they were popularly perceived as magic totems of the ancient world, almost legendary idols (Vitale, 1990: 334).

36 Monuments on the fringes of museums 8 The most famous example was the sculpture popularly called ‘Pasquino’, an ancestral meeting point in the downtown of Rome displaying all types of declarations (Giovannini, 1997). 9 Inside the Capitoline Museum, eighteenth-century tourists were monitored depending on their rank by the custode himself – the first was Marquis Alessandro Gregorio Capponi, succeeded by Marquis Lucatelli – or sottocustode Pietro Forier, or by his son, Gasparo Forier (Paul, 2012: 40). 10 Underage visitors were not easily accepted during the eighteenth century into the Galleria degli Uffizi, and access to some rooms with nudes was restricted for ladies and youngsters (Roettgen, 2010; specific rules did not exist, and it was only in 1784 that a ticket system was put in place for public access arranged in groups at the agreed times without paying a tip, according to Findlen (2012: 104). 11 Some sculptures were commissioned for the neighbouring Portico degli Uffizi after the public subscription proposed in 1834 by typographer and printer Vincenzo Batelli to decorate its twenty-eight niches with portraits of illustrious Tuscans. But this could not eclipse at all the Loggia della Signoria, where an ancient statue of Menelaus with the body of Patroclus, which had formerly stood next to Ponte Vecchio, was added in 1838 (Capecchi, 1975); later on the display would be complemented by The Rape of Polyxena, made in 1865 by sculptor Pio Fedi (Vossilla, 1995). 12 Eighteenth-century vedute by Bernardo Bellotto, Thomas Patch or Giuseppe Zocchi could be compared to the abundant Romantic interpretations of this urban landscape portrayed by Giuseppe Gherardi or brothers Giuseppe and Carlo Cannela as visual evidence of the gradual increase of the sculpture collection displayed under the portico and its constant use as a social point for encounters and dialogues (Barletti, 2009). 13 The Renaissance cortile at the entrance to the museum in Piazzetta San Marco was finally opened to the public in 2013. Large classical statues welcome visitors, though some of the pieces sent to the Louvre were never returned. 14 The old palace, abandoned by the French royalty after settling in Versailles, did not only host artists or craftsmen pensionnaires du roi and meetings of the various academies but also the Salon, the official painting exhibition periodically displayed at the Salon Carrée and the Grande Galerie – with free admission to everybody (Singer-Lecocq, 1986: 261, 339). There were also many print dealers who frequently set up their stalls in the peristyles of the Cour Carrée, as well as shops of all kinds, sheltered under colourful awnings (Michel, 2007: 42–43), as depicted in a 1791 painting by Pierre Antoine De Machy, Les marchands d’estampes sous le guichet de la Colonnade (Paris, Musée du Louvre), or in a contemporary drawing by Philippe Meunier titled Le guichet du Louvre avec les marchands d’estampes et de tableaux (París, Musée Carnavalet). 15 A civic parade was organized by Jacques-Louis David through streets and squares appropriately decorated on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Republic, replacing monuments to kings by allegorical statues of freedom and national unity. When they arrived at the location where Louis XVI had been executed at the Place de la Révolution – renamed Place de la Concorde two years later – political representatives from all provinces of France set fire to a memorial evoking the ruins of feudalism, and then the public celebration culminated within the Grande Galerie (McClellan, 1994; Idem, 2008: 18–20). 16 A pyramid had already been erected in front of the Tuileries in honour of the martyrs of the Republic on 10 August 1792, to be complemented in the surroundings of the parliamentary chamber by many other public monuments devoted to tribunes and senators, old or present, envisaged as experimental new models of republican ideology (Poulot, 2004). The Tuileries Palace, not the Louvre, is featured in the background of an anonymous print representing the inauguration of

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a monument to Marat in the Place de la Réunion – the Carousel Square – likely projected by Jacques-Louis David, the deputy and artist whom the convention also commissioned public memorials to Bara or Rousseau and to decorate the gardens of the Tuileries with the statues that he himself would choose amongst those collected in the state storerooms. In addition, a figure of Atheism was publicly burned in that garden and an Allegory of Wisdom inaugurated by Robespierre on 8 June 1794 (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 1: 57; vol. 2: 466–469). To avoid upsetting them, some of Rubens’s paintings of Henry IV were removed, and it was generally preferred not to display artworks extolling the monarchy (Poulot, 1997: 224). Perhaps an added reason for this tradition was to make these monuments visible there to the Louvre’s in-house artists, most of whose studios and dwellings faced this green area along the Seine. Some of them would create more by their own initiative. Jacques-Louis David, who occupied a workshop whose windows overlooked the Jardin de l’Infante, had erected there under a tree a monument in memory of his pupil Drouais, who died in 1788 (Hautecoeur, 1928: 82–83). Those Fontainebleau bronzes never made it there. However, projects to turn the Infanta’s garden into an open air sculpture annex continued to be produced: by 23 November 1794, a project for the garden was already presented, including the proposed location of some sculptures (Cantarel-Bresson, 1981, vol. 1: 115; Bresc-Bautier &Pingeot, 1986, vol. 1: 73). After many vicissitudes the old bronze copies by Primaticcio of masterpieces from the Vatican collection, such as Sleeping Diana, Apollo Belvedere, Aphrodite of Cnidus, Hercules and Laocoon, were eventually brought from Fontainebleau, but they were installed at the Tuileries (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 376–381). According to a plan kept at the National Library of France, three bronze figures were to be placed symmetrically on either side of the central gate, forming a hemicycle prolonged by a long row of statues that would border the garden along the Seine (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 1: 73). This open air display was much liked, even by some adversaries of Lenoir’s museum, who proposed to move it to the Parisian gardens of Mousseaux, where its monuments would be strewn to form a vast sculptural park: the transfer was decreed in October 1800 by Prime Minister Lucien Bonaparte, but he soon left to Spain as ambassador, and his decree was cancelled by the next minister, Chaptal (Stara, 2013: 38). Thus, the patios and gardens of the Louvre were full of antiquities. On the one hand, this was due to the overwhelming growth of the museum collections. But these were also used as pawns in a ‘territorial battle’ for grounds in a dispute between the museum and other institutions. In May 1795, the Committee for Public Health had resolved to transfer the Stock Exchange to the garden in front of the Galerie d’Apollon, much to the irritation of the museum management. Just one and a half months after this ‘invasion’, the garden began to be used by the museum to install some collections, as long as they were weatherproof, supposedly because their great bulk and weight prevented them from being displayed inside alongside other antiquities. In October and November that year, new bronze, stone and marble pieces were incorporated and placed on pedestals in the garden, courtyard, peristyle, entrance and steps. As a result the Stock Exchange moved elsewhere in January 1796. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier and Anne Pingeot date in 1801 the arrival by the doors of the Louvre, in the Garden of the Infanta, the bronze copies of a statue of Diana and the Apollo Belvedere, respectively, taken from Fontainebleau and the collection of the Count Grimod d’Orsa, featured in this painting by Hubert Robert flanking the entrance of the pompously labelled ‘Musée Napoleon’ (BrescBautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 375, 420).

38 Monuments on the fringes of museums 24 The first commercial and leisure passage in Paris had opened near the Louvre, at the porticoes of the Palais Royal, one of whose earlier attractions was the Órleans art gallery. This polysemic name would also designate in French the shops of the art dealers, perhaps by a metonymy of spatial identification, as those kinds of businesses would abound in nineteenth-century arcades, whose classic antecedent was the Greek estoa, a portico given shelter to promenaders, shops and statues. 25 Circa 1800, this Mnemósine was transferred to the terrace of the Tuileries next to nine ancient statues of the Muses also coming from Marly (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 430, 455). 26 This singular public space was totally empty in 1801 when the second exhibition of industrial arts was organized there, with more than two hundred exhibitors from different French departments installed under the porticoes (illuminated at night with candelabra, according to a beautiful anonymous watercolour of the Musée Carnavalet). Its success was such that, when the monumental plans to occupy that patio did not prosper, it was used again in 1802 and 1806 for this great show of furniture, tapestries, fabrics, ceramics and goldsmiths. The next call for such national exhibition of industry products did not take place until 1819, again in the Louvre, but this time within the museum. 27 Many other drawings or prints featured the settings in Paris of these Venetian horses, whose arrival in the French capital had been immortalized in an etching by Pierre-Gabriel Berthault titled Entrée triomphale des objets de sciences et d ‘Art en France, devoted to the public performance organized in July 1798 with the loot from Italy, a triumphal parade conducted in Paris to the sound of bands, though people felt disappointed because most of the artistic collections ‘paraded’ protected inside their boxes (Gould, 1965: 65). This print shows the arrival at Champ de Mars, but the final apotheosis was the outdoor party organized later in the courtyard of the Louvre, when the artists acclaimed the Apollo Belvedere and other Italian sculptures, dancing until four in the morning (Poulot, 1997: 223). 28 In 1809, no fewer than forty-seven proposals of all kinds competed in a contest called for the monumental urbanization of the esplanade between the Louvre and the Tuileries, all of them loaded with flattering political allegories, some of which envisaged the combination of ancient statues with new Neoclassical sculptures and architectures created ex professo (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 473–474). 29 This political decoration of the Louvre would also serve as a model for many other museums, such as the Pinacoteca Brera in Milan, which opened its rooms in 1809, presided by Canova’s plaster of Bonaparte’s portrait as Mars Peacemaker, whose bronze version was not yet ready and would only be installed in the courtyard by the middle of the nineteenth century. 30 The II Empire ordered Clésinger an equestrian portrait of Francis I, of which three versions were made in bronze-coloured plaster, the first of which was placed in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre between 1855 and 1857. The same sculptor also proposed others of Napoleon I and Charlemagne, which remained in project form, for in 1862 Eugène Guillaume was entrusted with the commission of Napoleon’s portrait on horseback, which also did not materialize (BrescBautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 84–95, 227–228). 31 The Accademia Filarmonica opened its collections of antiquities on the initiative of its eminent member Marquis Scipione Maffei, who had them installed in a peristyle patio in 1738. He was determined to offer to the public a museo per poveri and a scuola all’aperto. Indeed, admission was free to anyone wishing to admire the antiquities at will; lay people, however, would hardly appreciate this permanent exhibition, lacking either oral or written explanations. The Teatro

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Filarmonico had burnt down in 1749 and its reconstruction was delayed, discontinuing the flow of spectators. The walls of the courtyard were so low that the palm trees or other charms of the garden could be seen from the square, as featured in some nineteenth-century etchings and photographs (Franzoni, 1982). But during the fascist period, it became necessary to raise the height of the building, which remained closed for most of the twentieth century due to war damage and subsequent reconstruction. Now the Museo Lapidario is one of the tourist attractions included in the Verona Card; even today a free glance can be had from the open gate in Piazza Bra where tickets are sold. The palace of the landgraves was destroyed in the bombings of 1943, and the monument to Federico II has been displaced to one side of the square (Sheehan, 1994: 172). Only the most motivated visitors would gain access upstairs to the collection of paintings, always accompanied by a warder; but what attracted most curiosity was the gallery of ancient sculptures on the ground floor, whose most celebrated piece, Sleeping Endymion, was placed in the centre with the statues of nine Muses, also imported from Rome (Bjurström, 1993). Athenian references abound in this architectural ensemble designed by Leo von Klenze, who also planned in 1836 the Pantechnion, a building to be erected in Athens to house the archaeological collections, an art gallery and an art school. On the other hand, Ludwig I admired the Florentine Loggia della Signoria so much that he commissioned a replica, built east of Munich Hofgarten, called Feldherrnhalle. After the inauguration of the Nationalgalerie in 1876, several pieces from the sculpture collection were placed amongst the hedgerows of the Kolonnadenhof. Some of these sculptures had been specifically commissioned from contemporary artists by the museum to adapt to the prevailing classical motifs: Hercules, Dianas, amazons, nymphs, centaurs, boars. To date eight of them remain in this public space, all of them bronzes. However, after World War II and the communist regime, only one of the equestrian portraits of monarchs from the Gründerzeit survived: the monument to Frederick William IV, by Alexander Calandrelli, erected in 1886 outside the Nationalgalerie. Thus, the monument erected ten years later opposite the Altes Museum in memory of Frederick William III, by Albert Wolff, and the monument to Frederick III by Rudolf Maison, inaugurated in 1904 in front of the Bode Museum, are missing. This sculpture was moved at the end of the century to the lobby of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, built opposite the Hofburg. The Museo Lapidario Estense was instituted by Francis IV of Austria-Este on the ground floor of this Neoclassical palace, which later came to be called Palazzo dei Musei, housing antiquities and epigraphy of the Roman Civilization, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Giordani & Paolozzi Strozzi, 2003). Goya makes a good description in some of his letters; Antonio González Velázquez graphically evoked it in a drawing titled El Salón del Prado (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional). Fernando Brambila died in 1832, so he did not live to see the statues of two Goth Kings a year later come from the Palacio Real to decorate that portico, nor did he see the allegories of the virtues of Carlos III and Fernando VII installed in the niches of the facade or the provisional decoration installed on the occasion of Isabel’s oath as princess heiress to the throne in 1833 (Carrasco Ferrer, 1999; Sánchez del Peral, 2011; Azcue, 2012). To highlight the fact of the change of speciality of what had originally been conceived as a museum of natural science, the main facade of the Prado Museum was crowned by the allegory Las Bellas Artes honrando a Fernando VII installed upon the pediment in 1842. It was also decorated between 1830 and 1831 with sixteen medallions portraying the heads of celebrated Spanish artists, also the

40 Monuments on the fringes of museums work of Ramón Barba. But this series of portraits did not necessarily work as a sign to passers-by of the art collection displayed within. The mural decoration of many art buildings would commonly display written signs or sculpted medallions portraying artists who were not part of their collections. 41 ‘Peri-museum’ because the monuments stood near the museum, and ‘para-museum’ because although they were worthy of a museum in terms of their quality, they were not given the care and protection of a museum collection. Artworks indoors were usually identified by labels increasingly more detailed in the nineteenth century, following the habitual uses in public art, but the sculptures placed in gardens or squares around museums were very rarely labelled. 42 The term musée was often used in nineteenth-century France alluding to a fully illustrated book or periodical regarding a variegated range of curiosities: the monthly journal Musée des familles, published in Paris from October 1833 to June 1900, claimed to be ‘a people’s Louvre’. It had imitators in the rest of France and in other countries, including Spain, where the term museum was often used for illustrated periodicals with civic or educational aims. 43 In 1869 the statue of Daoíz and Velarde was placed before the remains of Monteleón barracks in Parque Norte, at the time on the outskirts of Madrid, which raised objections in terms of its conservation, so in 1879 it was returned to the Prado Museum, though it was not placed indoors but remained outside, by the main entrance. In 1899 it was replaced by the sitting statue of Velázquez. At that point Solà’s artwork did find a place inside the museum, though only ephemerally as it was transferred to Moncloa square in 1901, a peripheral area near the Modelo prison and San Bernardino Home. In 1931 it returned to Plaza del 2 de Mayo, which is its current location (Azcue, 2009; Azcue, 2012: 106; Géal, 2014).

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Statues of great artists erected near museums

The history of art became a newly developing academic discipline throughout the nineteenth century, not only in universities and other centres of high education but also in many art museums, increasingly staging their displays according to art-historical discourses (Whitehead, 2009). Outside them, the decoration of their facades and some monuments erected in public spaces nearby somehow proclaimed similar professional values. Up to what extent was public art around museums a sequel – or prequel – to the cult of the genius worshipped inside the temples of the Muses? (Guillén, 2007). This chapter will offer answers to that question, surveying the development of a monumental tradition which reached its apogee in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century, though some of the most influential examples in front of the Louvre were removed soon afterwards. Vintage postcards have been used as source material for this research because they offer us not only visual evidence of such urban ornaments but also valuable testimonies of the degree of popularity of those statues. Their postal circulation bestowed a greater public recognition of some urban districts, even in remote or marginal contexts, competing, in another aesthetic league, with the charm of picturesque views of museum exteriors featured in the previous chapter. However, the main change in the following pages does not only concern iconographic resources but also the monumental icons studied. As the nineteenth century advanced, other kinds of monuments began to take over as referential landmarks of cultural districts. Hitherto, academies, libraries, theatres, museums and other civic buildings erected in the most prominent parts of the cities could share a similar repertoire of classical decoration displayed on their frontages and the surrounding statues in public areas. Allegories or images of Muses, kings and patrons or other dignitaries would still remain as a recurrent iconography, but the main novelty worth special consideration here was the effigies to cultural creators which gradually began to adorn gardens and nearby squares from the period of Romanticism onwards. While the epicentre of cities during the Enlightenment had been marked by ancient or antiquitizing figures of classical gods and heroes or statesmen replicating Greco-Roman monuments, the portraits of cultural notables were to become increasingly numerous in new districts. Within this category, some kind of

42 Monuments on the fringes of museums urban specialization would develop, as the portraits of scholars or writers were placed near libraries, musicians or playwrights by music halls and theatres whereas artists were celebrated in front of the ‘temples of the arts’. To signal their commitment to the arts, many museum buildings, both newly erected or remodelled, had been decorated with portraits of artists, which also used to adorn other art institutions and monuments: an iconographic cast featuring the likeness of the most revered old masters which attested to the changing ranking of artists as taste and national or local symbolisms evolved (Haskell, 1976; Hetherington, 1978; Chevillot, 1994; Bonnet, 2008; Armstrong, 2009; Bertinet, 2012). Yet in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a new trend would flourish everywhere for decorating squares and streets near museums with free-standing monuments of celebrated artists. These emblematic statues shaped a new pattern in the history of symbolic interaction between museums and public space, inasmuch as they were urban monuments detached from the walls of the institutions, usually uninvolved in their commission, which would often originate from initiatives taken by national or local authorities. Sometimes such monumental portraits of artists were looking towards the museum facade, while others directed their eyes and gestures to people passing by; whatever the case, their figures and gazes established visual connections between citizens and art institutions outdoors, which, it is argued here, should deserve more museological attention (drawing on the pioneering studies of some architecture scholars about the psychological influence of certain statues displayed inside museums on the spatial circulation indoors; Tzortzi, 2015: 95–96). An eye-catching presence of artists, either in flesh and bone or in bronze and marble, logically raised social awareness of those public spaces as conspicuous art districts.

3.1 The first urban monuments devoted to artists; pioneering cases adjacent to art institutions The roots of this new prototype of monument draw back to the emergence of a new perception of patriotic values which began to make headway in the eighteenth century. Voltaire had claimed that the true heroes deserving commemoration should no longer be the generals who annexed territories but the people who excelled in science and culture (Haskell, 1993: 201–206). This enlightened idea prompted not only perceptions of ‘cultural history’ which gradually replaced traditional military and court chronicles but also the appearance of new protagonists honoured in the public space. While statues formerly erected in squares and streets used to exalt monarchs, war heroes and saints, consonant with traditional moral hierarchies, little by little scientists and artists were also honoured by means of stone or bronze effigies placed in some public areas. Even Voltaire, Montesquieu, Newton, Goethe and many other intellectuals at the time were immediately put forward for monument exaltation as ‘public men’. These initiatives, however, often remained nothing more than projects or, after debates and changes

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of mind about where they ought to be best placed, the statues were located in semi-public spaces or inside buildings linked to the cultural legacy of the respective intellectual figure. A social, urban and iconographic hierarchy somehow lived on. Squares and principal avenues continued to be the preferred stage for leaders to display images of themselves in grandiloquent poses before present or future citizens and visitors. The portraits of eminent men from the world of culture, however, usually showed greater restraint and sobriety even in the locations chosen to place them, usually in areas of less public prominence or in semi-public zones. The busts of distinguished characters were in fact a recurring adornment in private gardens open to visitors and served as the inspiration for sculptures to be placed in some ‘amusement parks’ which enlivened large cities throughout Europe. One of the leading instances was Vauxhall Park in London. It was a private enclosure where paying visitors could enjoy all sorts of recreational activities, especially dances and music concerts. As Handel’s music was particularly popular, the sculptor François Roubiliac received a commission to erect a seated statue of the musician in 1738 (Bindman, 1997). This was not an isolated case, though it certainly was one of the most successful, and perhaps this was the type of sculpture Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld had in mind when, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, he published an essay on art within gardens. He claimed that private gardens open to the public were the most appropriate settings for monuments to philosophers, writers and artists, a protocol pointed out by Thomas Gaehtgens and Gregor Wedekind who also add a second rule of decorum according to which busts were more appropriate for philosophers, writers or artists – whose minds had produced outstanding achievements – while equestrian or upright statues ought to be reserved for portraying kings, military heroes, religious persons, orators or any other person who had played a leading role through the force of his arms and his entire body, as philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued in a text written in 1837.1 However, there is an exception to every rule, and many instances in the eighteenth century seem to contradict these two protocols. This was the case of the renowned sculpture Parnasse françois, created by Louis Garnier between 1708 and 1718, under commission from Titon du Tillet to immortalize Louis XIV as Apollo surrounded by his principal poets and musicians. It consists of a group of full-length statues originally designed to decorate the gardens of Versailles or a square in Paris, though none of these two destinations materialized. Daniel Villeneuve had an even more idealistic idea. In his essay Le voyageur philosophe dans un pays inconnu aux habitants de la Terre, published in 1761 with the pen name Mr. de Listonai, he envisaged a square with the figure of the ruling monarch, complemented in secondary squares by the statues of other eminent men, placing side by side warriors, sages and artists.2 The planned monuments to Leibniz, Sulzer and Lambert which Frederick II agreed to erect in a new square in Berlin in front of the newly built library never came to fruition either, whereas modest monuments

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to poets placed in private gardens open to the public flourished in Germany to the point that they have been considered an emblem of the melancholy sensitivity – Empfindsamkeit – developed during the enlightened period (Sellmann, 1988; Kanz, 1993 & 2009). This Pre-Romantic sentimentalism was also shared by the famed Jardin Elysée in Paris, designed by Alexandre Lenoir in the gardens of the Museum of French Monuments towards 1799. It was intended as an area for reflection whose grandiose name alluded to the mythical Elysian Fields conjured up by a beautiful mixture of rural woodland with funerary and commemorative monuments to celebrities from the past, among which such men of letters as Descartes or Molière figured prominently (Poulot, 1994; Recht, 1997). There was no shortage of other monumental gardens, inspired by woodland areas surrounding ancient temples or around other ‘pantheons’ more metaphorical than funerary, such as the Romantic park of Villa Puccini in Sconio, near Pistoia, decorated between 1827 and 1834 with terracotta busts of such prominent men as Rafael and Canova. Within cities, the next step consisted of Neoclassical monuments to honour the memory of great writers whose most natural locations were primarily green areas beside libraries. Later, in the Romantic era, monuments to writers were common throughout Europe and stood amidst flowerbeds or in little piazzas outside academies, libraries, theatres and other such urban sites. Some were even placed in main squares, as in many Italian cities in the Risorgimento period, where statues erected to Dante were full of political significance, as ‘the father of the Italian language’ had by then reached the status of a patriotic icon.3 Given that almost all nationalist movements were so centred on the exaltation of their respective national language, it can hardly be surprising that statues to writers were given such prominence in public zones. But artists also became national icons, especially in countries where there was no unity of language. Already in Belgium by 1827, even before independence from the Netherlands, the possibility of erecting a monument to Rubens in Antwerp was contemplated in order to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the painter, though the project did not materialize until a few years later,4 in the centre of Groenplaats, a historical site next to the cathedral, where some of the artist’s masterpieces are housed. Likewise, other nationalist strategies resulted in what today is considered the first monument in honour of an artist erected in a public space: the sculpture of Dürer by Christian Daniel Rauch under commission from Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1828 for Nuremberg, the painter’s hometown. It is particularly relevant to point out here that this instance constituted a cardinal point in the symbolic social appropriation of this type of monument because the king would have preferred to place it within the court building, known as Burgfreiung, in an open air patio of the imperial castle overlooking the city. The author, however, insisted that the city centre, not far from the artist’s place of birth, was more appropriate. The square formerly called the Old Milk Market was finally chosen and became known as the Dürer-Platz. The monument’s

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inaugural stone was laid to the sound of trumpets on 7 April 1828, the day of the three hundredth anniversary of the death of the painter. It was celebrated with a massive pan-Germanic festival attracting artists and scholars from many German cities, though the final bronze sculpture was not inaugurated until 21 May 1840. Commemoration coins were even minted at the time depicting this statue of Dürer standing on a pedestal with paintbrushes in his right hand, looking straight ahead as he does in his self-portraits, with a typically German florid beard and long hair over his fur jacket.5 The exaltation of Dürer as a German paradigm was so successful that twelve years later the Germanisches National Museum was founded in the former monastery of Nuremberg. Its collection, mainly centred on the period of the eminent Renaissance artist, was a further typical Romantic nationalist endeavour. However, in Dürer’s hometown, the monument and the museum extolling his patriotic significance were located far apart; in Colmar, birth town of Martin Schongauer, the monument erected to him, a fountain with the standing portrait of the artist carved in stone in 1860 by Auguste Bartholdi, was placed in the garden of the cloister inside Unterlinden Museum. Both instances were featured in postcards of patriotic exaltation under the Kaiserreich; however, while the monumental fountain in honour of Schongauer in the Alsatian city was dismantled under the Fifth French Republic, the monument to Dürer in Nuremberg has always remained in situ, though air raids during World War II destroyed the typically German houses so often depicted in images from long ago as its backdrop. Meanwhile, in Spain, the period most patriotically revered was the socalled Siglo de Oro, a designation originally referring to the great momentum reached by the Spanish language from Nebrija to Calderón, including such great authors as Cervantes, Lope de Vega or Quevedo, though artists from that period also gained increasing public prominence, even in terms of monuments in public zones. A very special case was that of Murillo, the Spanish painter most acclaimed by the Romantic generation internationally. It was hardly a coincidence that by 1838 the idea of paying tribute to him by means of a public sculpture originated in Seville, his hometown. Velázquez was less appreciated at the time, and from a local point of view, his career seemed more linked to the court in Madrid than to the Andalusian capital, whereas Murillo had spent his entire life in his birth town. The first proposal came from the Liceo and was then adopted by Seville’s Academy of Fine Arts and by the city hall, though the final step towards its realization came from another cultural association, the Sociedad Sevillana de Emulación y Fomento, which in 1855 appointed a civic committee for the construction of a monument to Murillo. With the collaboration of its central office in Madrid, the Sociedad Española de Emulación y Fomento managed to raise a total of 139,492 reales by national public subscription, headed by the local corporation and members of the royalty, though the greatest part – 115,418 reales – was raised through a raffle of artworks donated by artists and collectors. Nonetheless, despite sufficient funding and ample social support, the

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project was delayed by bureaucratic wrangling,6 not least being the lack of agreement on where to locate the monument. The initial option was to place it in the Plaza de Santa Cruz, at the heart of the popular neighbourhood of the same name where the painter had resided. The small size of the square and the complicated layout of this part of the city were not optimal to guarantee the social exposure sought for the display of the statue, and consequently a larger venue close to the city hall was chosen in what was then known as the Plaza de la Infanta Isabel. But in the meantime, the site that was intended for the monument was chosen by the municipality of Seville to locate a statue in honour of King Saint Fernando, on the occasion of the visit of Isabel II to the city the following year. It was thus decided that the Plaza del Museo, where some of the most famous paintings by Murillo are housed, would be the most suitable location. Finally, in 1863 the bronze portrait of the painter was erected there on a raised pedestal in the middle of this square. It was solemnly unveiled on 1 January of the following year, on the anniversary of his birth. A special comment must be made about the interesting design of the statue portraying Murillo. Firstly, the creator, Madrid sculptor Sabino de Medina, represented the painter in a peculiar pose. The bust is inspired by self-portraits of the artist, though the figure does not hold paintbrushes and barely rests his left hand on a shelf where his palette and a sketch of the Virgin Mary are placed. His general body posture recalls the most famous devotional images painted by Murillo, the right hand over the chest, one leg forward in contrapposto, staring into the sky: this is precisely the new iconography of the Immaculata fashioned by Murillo as opposed to the traditional image with her hands joined together in the act of praying while looking down. Though used here in the portrait of the artist himself, it highlights his fervent inspiration; exalting his devotion over his manual dexterity with his hand over his heart and his ecstatic gaze. That was the idea of Murillo which prevailed then in Spain. While foreign collectors preferred his genre pictures portraying scoundrels, homeland amateurs valued above all his religious paintings, many of which are treasured precisely at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Seville. It was therefore a coherent option to place this portrait of Murillo, so inspired by his own Catholic iconography, in the square in front of the main entrance to the former convent of La Merced, where Masses for his soul were offered after his death. However, these religious connotations were now supplemented by the practical need to indicate that an art museum was operating in this old building, whose baroque facade had not been decorated with civic ornaments related to the arts. From this point of view, it was a consistent decision to place the statue of the artist side-on to the museum entrance and facing the numerous passersby walking along the street which is now known as Alfonso XII, which links the centre of Seville to the Guadalquivir river. It brings to public attention a building whose entrance might otherwise go unnoticed (Figure 3.1a). In this manner, a prototype of the monument to an artist in squares in front of museums was fortuitously created. Given that many museums were

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placed in old religious or aristocratic buildings or in purpose-built constructions whose architecture emulated cathedrals and palaces, it was also natural to imitate their urban environment. Because the squares in front of churches were adorned with crosses or statues of saints, while public spaces adjoining parliaments, town halls or other seats of political power usually honoured patriotic heroes, often public areas in front of art institutions would have portraits of artists. This was a modern derivation from ancestral ante portas monuments, though they never fully ousted the usual statues dedicated to political grandees or similar personages because museums were also a favourite showcase for the powerful, whose monumental portraits often continued to play a leading role inside and in nearby urban areas, where they would be dignified as the founders of the respective institution or as generous patrons of the arts.7 However, while the portraits of the mighty often presided over the hectic life of main squares and great avenues, initially those dedicated to artists were more likely relegated to quieter areas. In this context, their erection in landscaped public spaces in front of art academies and museums marked the spread of their social standing in the public realm. Seville’s statue of Murillo in the garden square in front of the Fine Arts Museum constituted a major innovation in the interaction between museums and their urban background. Traditionally the visual elements used to lure passers-by into a ‘temple of the arts’ had been allegories of painting and sculpture or the names and effigies of artists decorating the building with

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Figure 3.1 Museum Square in Seville and monument to Murillo by the Prado Museum in Madrid (Vintage postcards)

48 Monuments on the fringes of museums murals, reliefs or free-standing sculptures. That ornamental habit did not disappear, though in the second half of the nineteenth century a new strategy gradually spread, giving more prominence to images of artists in urban areas around art museums. It would be far-fetched to pretend that large European cities where this practice was emulated followed the example of Seville, though it did have international repercussions when implemented in the environs of the Museo del Prado. Circumstances surrounding this early instance in Madrid were also quite fortuitous and imprecise. The initiative appears to have come from the sculptor Sabino de Medina. On 13 April 1861, he wrote an application to the mayor of Madrid that the statue of Murillo he had been commissioned to create for Seville was about to be cast in bronze in Paris by Eyck and Durand, who could make a second copy for a little extra cost should Madrid, ‘where most of the painter’s admirable artworks were housed’, wished to pay tribute to him (Salvador, 1991b: 99). The sculptor made sure to add that the statue would look well in any street or square chosen by the city hall, though his indirect allusion to museum collections did not go unnoticed by the corporation, who soon after informing the artist that his proposal had been accepted, sought permission from the Royal Heritage to place the statue in front of the Museo Real de Pinturas, whose facade already boasted the effigies of some great artists.8 However, in order to avoid giving Murillo excessive prominence in El Prado, on 14 November 1864, the city hall Works Committee suggested commissioning Sabino Medina to create a sculpture dedicated to Velázquez for the same purpose. The Fine Arts Academy of Madrid not only backed this idea but also requested a third statue to be erected in front of El Prado dedicated to the architect of the building, Juan de Villanueva – though for the latter the city hall chose to commission it from another sculptor, José Piquer, from Valencia. This monumental agenda involved relegating Murillo to a small lateral piazza and reserving the main entrance for Velázquez, whose statue had been completed in bronze by Medina in 1868. But the revolution that year ousted the Bourbons, and the project was put on hold. Luckily, in 1871 the monument to Murillo was eventually unveiled in the square between the botanic gardens and one of the entrances to the museum. Emulating the location of its counterpart in Seville, it was also decided here that the portrait of Murillo should not gaze upon the museum itself but at passers-by along the promenade of the Prado. Strolling nearby used to be destitute kids who quite likely never made it into the museum but appear portrayed in many vintage postcards posing next to the monument of the distinguished painter (Figure 3.1b). Tourists pondering over which postcard featuring Murillo’s paintings housed at the museum to send as a souvenir to their friends could thus opt for this cliché combining the double stereotypical Murillesque iconography of an entranced figure looking into the sky and the image of a street urchin, with the bucolic view of the Paseo del Prado.

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3.2 Setting monumental trends in art districts at the turn of the century In Paris, ever since the National Convention had been housed at the Tuileries Palace, its gardens and esplanades had increasingly become a public stage of all sorts of monuments, while standing statues of great men – including some artists – adorned the facade of the Louvre in the Cour Napoleon since the middle of the nineteenth century. By then it was a common international procedure of architectural decoration to put portraits of artists at the entrances of art museums and academies.9 But not in urban public spaces around museums.10 This makes extremely rare the grand project to erect a monument to Velázquez in the Jardin de l’Infante, opposite the Flora Pavilion. His large equestrian portrait made by Emmanuel Frémiet has always raised comments about the uncharacteristic portrayal of a painter riding a horse, in the manner of a condottiero, though it would have actually been more strange not to find an animal represented in a work by this animalist sculptor, known today mainly for the equestrian portrait of Joan of Arc in golden bronze decorating another square in Paris. What seems truly intriguing in this case is the idea for this monument in a landscaped public space opposite the Louvre and the fact that it was the most famous Spanish painter could perhaps be quite telling of where its inspiration originated. Indeed, the Spanish connection is apparent also in the urban setting selected: the Jardin de l’Infante, opposite the Flora Pavilion of the Louvre. Created in 1722 for the Spanish Infanta María Ana Victoria, betrothed to Louis XV, this garden was surrounded by golden fences that kept it separated from the hustle and bustle of city life, preserving its intimacy: this is how Claude Monet chose to represent it in an 1867 picture (Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin, Ohio) where only a couple of lovers and some other solitary visitors stand inside, while modern traffic of carriages and crowds roars outside. This enclosed garden seemed secure enough to be considered, soon after the inauguration of the Louvre, a ‘natural’ enlargement outside the museum, whose expanding collections could not be contained indoors; moreover, between 1842 and 1869, some monumental bronze sculptures cast in Paris had been regularly exhibited by that museum entrance, in front of the Pont des Arts, before sending them to other locations in France or abroad. Quite a few were figures on horseback. Maybe that’s why, when the Ministry of Education’s director of fine arts, Antonin Proust, talked in 1890 with sculptor Frémiet about his Velásquez, at that time triumphing in the Salon in a plaster version, they both agreed that it should become a public monument in bronze, and in the conversation it occurred to them that this garden by the Louvre could be a very appropriate location (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 205–206, number 168 of catalogue).11 Serendipity, not premeditated decisions, had guided the creation of this equestrian monument from the beginning. It seems that the figure was inspired by the alguacil leading the parade of bullfighters in a corrida the sculptor had

50 Monuments on the fringes of museums attended in Paris towards the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1889. When he sent the plaster to the 1890 Salon des Artistes Français, he cunningly identified the rider as Velázquez, with the hope that someone would turn it into a monument, either in Paris, Madrid or even America.12 Indeed, after some administrative delays, the next year the French State commissioned a cast in bronze, which was legally ascribed to the national museum collections in 1893, but according to the Louvre’s internal regulations, the sculpture could not be exhibited in that gallery of great old masters because the author was still alive: thus, following the suggestions of the sculptor, it was installed in early November 1893 at the Jardin de l’Infante. A spiritually uplifting green space adjacent to the museum, it would be for more than forty years a most suitable setting for this statue honouring a famous historical figure, divulged during the Belle Époque through postcards and collectible trading cards (Figure 3.2a). It was somehow understood as a monument to the noble condition of artists, as Velázquez is not represented as a painter but as a knight or caballero; moreover, it also epitomized the high status reached then in France by a historic master considered as the ancestor of the Impressionists and the muse of many other contemporary artists. Almost at the same time, the Infanta’s garden was decorated with another monument by Emmanuel Frémiet also devoted to an artist, Auguste Raffet, a celebrated Romantic painter and lithographer whose most famous works at the Louvre depicted military themes. A committee created in 1891 to commemorate him with a public monument had chosen to give the commission to Frémiet, who designed an equestrian statue inspired by a riding cuirassier featured in one of the pictures by Raffet. But the money raised was scarce, and even with the subvention by the Ministry of Public Works obtained by the sculptor, the project had to be more modest: a bust portrait of the painter on top of a Corinthian column decorated with the bronze figure – after Raffet’s lithography Le Réveil des morts – of a Grenadier drummer calling to battle with his tambour, surrounded by military trophies of past French glories. For political reasons, this homage to a French painter would be given greater priority and public honours, while the equestrian portrait of the Spaniard was slowed and materialized with lower profile celebrations: the sources refer to a mere official report of emplacement signed on 6 November 1893 regarding the protracted Velázquez statue, while the monument to Raffet had been unveiled in an official ceremony held three days before – though they had to use the plaster version of the bust; only later on was the portrait in marble installed on top of the column. It subsequently became one of the most popular attractions in the Louvre complex, as can be evidenced by the abundance of postcards devoted to it still to be found today at the stalls of bouquinistes on the Seine13 (Figure 3.2b). It is curious to compare the ambitious artistic conception of the Velásquez statue with the rather conventional monument to Raffet, not to mention its different political connotations. The latter matched more the composition

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(b)

Figure 3.2 Monuments to Velázquez and Raffet in the Jardin de l’Infante by the Louvre (Vintage postcards)

and symbolism of the obelisk which had been erected in the middle of the Cour Napoleon on 14 July 1888 in memory of a bellicose politician deceased four years earlier, Léon Gambetta, whose statue was commissioned from Jean-Paul Aubé, a sculptor from the Lorraine region – a territory lost in the Franco-Prussian War. Aubé was also the author of a famous sitting portrait of François Boucher, whose plaster version had gained acclaim in the 1888 Salon, which led to a State commission in 1890 to produce the marble statue. It was ascribed to the Louvre in 1892 but could not join the museum display due to the internal regulations forbidding works by living artists; thus, it was intended for its surrounding gardens, which according to declarations in 1893 by Jules Comte, directeur des bâtiments civils, were to be transformed into ‘une sorte de Panthéon de tous les maîtres de l’art dont les oeuvres sont la richesse de notre grand musée’ (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 1: 145). However, only in 1894 was this portrait of Boucher installed at the Jardin de l’Infante: it can be spotted in turn-of-thecentury postcards featuring Raffet’s monument in the foreground. Other

52 Monuments on the fringes of museums

Figure 3.3 Boucher monument (also featuring the statue of Velázquez in the background) in the Jardin de l’Infante by the Louvre (Vintage postcard – wrongly titled Monument de Watteau)

vintage postcards focus on this sitting portrait of the Rococo painter, holding an oval-shaped canvas and paintbrushes close to a big palette offered by Cupido, contrasting with the large equestrian portrait of Velázquez in the background (Figure 3.3). But often such images wrongly identified the statue as a monument to Watteau, perhaps because it lacked a clear inscription and in the public imagination the setting was then associated with the most popular rococo artist, celebrated by symbolist poet Albert Samain in his 1893 book, Au Jardin de l’Infante.14 The fourth monument in this Parnassian garden arrived just a year later, after some administrative delays. A committee had been formed soon after the death of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier in 1891 to raise funds for the erection of a monument in his honour combining public subscription with a subvention from the Ministry of Education and generous donations from the family of the painter. They chose the sculptor Antonin Mercié, who first proposed a neobaroque portrait with allegorical figures, but he was advised to accommodate stylistically to the pre-existing statues in the coveted location, the Jardin de l’Infante. Thus, he produced a sitting figure like that of Boucher, represented also in pensive attitude, as if looking for inspiration: a thinking pose fitting the social conventions of decorum appropriate for intimate gardens adorned with portraits of people distinguished by their thought and creativity. But Meissonier had been famous for his patriotic military topics, thus his statue was accompanied by martial emblems at his feet, similar to those at the bottom of Raffet’s monument (Figure 3.4a). The

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(b)

Figure 3.4 Monument to Meissonier in front of the entrance to the Louvre; monument to Gérôme at the Jardin de l’Oratoire by the Louvre (Vintage postcards)

inauguration took place on 26 October 1895, and a few days later some changes in the iconography had to be made, eliminating the hat of Napoleon originally accompanying the national flag. Perhaps this assured these military ornaments more endurance, contrasting with the fatal destiny of those at the bottom of Raffet’s bust portrait, apart from the fact that the monument to Meissonier was all made in marble.15 Curiously, most artists honoured at the Jardin de l’Infante had in common a taste for martial topics. It is thus not extraordinary that another monument was proposed there in 1898 to the glory of the Vernet dynasty of painters, so famous for their pictures of port citadels and Napoleonic battles.16 The next statue made for this modern Parnassus would be of a fighting gladiator, whose monumental dimensions overwhelmed the small portrait of the artist represented. Pompier painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme died in 1904, and the following year the Académie des Beaux-Arts commissioned a monument to his memory, backed by Étienne Dujardin-Beaumetz, undersecretary of state for the fine arts, who promised a place for it at the Jardin de l’Infante. However, that garden was already overcrowded with statues

54 Monuments on the fringes of museums according to the architect in charge of the Louvre, who proposed instead the Jardin de l’Oratoire, symmetrically situated on the other side of the museum, facing Rue de Rivoli. Thus, it was there that the new monument was inaugurated on 8 July 1909: a full-length portrait of Gérôme made by his sonin-law Aimé Morot combined with the original bronze of a combat between gladiators signed by Gérôme in 1878 and donated by the family (Figure 3.4b). Interestingly, media coverage of the inaugural ceremony focused more on the fighters’ figures by Gérôme, disregarding his portrait by Morot (De Font-Réaux, Des Cars, & Papet, 2010: 308). The innovative dual conception of the monument passed rather unnoticed; indeed, this strange novelty could have been another reason justifying a new urban setting, together with the iconographic peculiarity of the portrait which, in contrast with the aforementioned nineteenth-century predilection for self-absorbed artists, depicts Gérôme engaged in manual labour, dynamically involved in sculpting one of his most famous statues. The group of gladiators by Gérôme and the addition of his standing portrait were well received by art critics – much to the chagrin of sculptor Frémiet, who had intended to place in that location his monument to sculptor François Rude, which ended up at the facade of the Dijon School of Fine Arts; but the scarcity of postcards featuring it indicates that it remained quite unnoticed by lay people despite its endurance in situ for many decades.17 Even less fortunate were the following projects of monuments for the Jardin de l’Observatoire, a statue portraying the painter Antoine Vollon and another in memory of the painter Alexandre Cabanel. Both were to be paid by public subscriptions launched by the respective committees created on purpose; but the money came too slowly, and the Great War aborted these initiatives (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 174–175, 474, numbers 138 and 420 of catalogue). In Spain, meanwhile, the statue of Velázquez in front of the Louvre had stirred the old plan to erect a monument to him by the main entrance of the National Museum. By then Medina’s statue had likely been lost or forgotten. Thus, a competition was organized in 1893 by the Círculo de Bellas Artes, a cultural association that led a public subscription to pay for the cast in bronze, raising funds from Spanish artists. The winner, sculptor Aniceto Marinas, offered to work with no remuneration, yet it was not until 1899 that his monument to Velázquez came to fruition. That was the year of the three hundredth anniversary of his birth, and the unveiling was a top-level political event in the presence of Queen Regent María Cristina and her son, the future king, Alfonso XIII. Once again, the statue represents the great master as a gentleman in elegant attire and otiose attitude but here holding his tools in his hands – maulstick, paintbrush and palette – key elements prevalent in portraits of painters as the iconic attributes of saints in religious statues (Figure 3.5a). However, Velázquez is not working with them and, like Boucher or Meissonier at the Infanta’s garden, he too is seated, as if he had paused to reflect while his paintbrush remains suspended.18 As with those

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Figure 3.5 Velázquez monument in front of the western facade of the Prado Museum; monument to Goya by the northern entrance to the Prado Museum (Vintage postcards)

Parisian precedents, this statue gives its back to the museum, used as photographic background for postcards and tourists’ souvenirs, and contrary to the Murillo monument, the painter looks downwards, absorbed in an engrossed attitude, contrasting with the more active poses and commanding gazes typical of statues portraying politicians and soldiers. Similarly, the next monument erected in front of the Prado Museum was also a sitting statue of a pensive artist, portraying Goya, the new rising star in Spain’s artistic pantheon, placed with his back to the museum building. Its author, José Llaneces, had enjoyed for many years great commercial success in the French capital with his Goyaesque genre paintings. Upon returning to Spain, he presented this portrait, in homage to his most admired painter.19 It was cast in bronze and located in 1904 on the new steps to the northern entrance – which had been built by architect Francisco Jareño – where it remained for more than two decades, becoming a popular backdrop for photos and postcards. Its iconography is based on the celebrated portrait of an elderly and sour-faced Goya painted by Vicente López, and it is difficult to tell whether its sitting position is an influence from the monument

56 Monuments on the fringes of museums to Velázquez by Aniceto Marinas or vice versa, as its chronology is uncertain.20 The sculpture was included in the catalogue of collections owned by the Prado Museum, yet it was not placed inside or ornamenting the facade but erected in a semi-public space, on the top of the entrance stairs, like the sitting statues of two famous scholars, Isidore of Seville and Alphonse the Wise, by the facade of the Spanish National Library (Figure 3.5b). In the meantime, given that cultural policies and trends in Paris were at the time followed in the rest of the world, emulations emerged in other countries as well, sometimes reusing classical monumental iconographies: for instance, a bronze sculpture by Robert Fabri, initially placed in 1896 in one of the sides of the steps to the main entrance of the Fine Art Museum in Antwerp as Fame crowning the Genius, became a proper monument to Van Dyck, when this heroic nude portrait of the great Flemish painter and the accompanying allegory were placed in 1899 at the rear of the museum with the inscription ‘AAN ANTOON VAN DIJCK’ on a free-standing pedestal – which is now the only part left.21 On the other hand, it is not only historical personalities who would be honoured with statues in front of art museums; as it happened in Paris, some portrayed recently deceased artists, whose iconography was quite modern-looking. But the precedent set by the statue of Gérôme working physically and dressed in work clothes had little fortune, as the standard preference continued to be for smart and intellectual poses. Some of the best examples are British, devoted to Victorian artists represented in the elegant frock coat typical of bourgeois dignitaries but holding the symbols of their job: their statues standing in front of art institutions were like milestones publicly marking cultural districts. In London, the posthumous monument to John Everet Millais, a bronze portrait by Thomas Brock, one of the most prestigious sculptors of public and funeral monuments in the United Kingdom, representing the painter before a studio stool, with his palette and a paintbrush in his hands, was paid by public subscription at the initiative of a memorial committee chaired by the prince of Wales and Edward Poynter – Millais’s successor as president of the Royal Academy – who decided that the most appropriate location would be the gardens of Millbank, by the Tate Gallery, whose founder had been a good friend of the painter and sought his advice in building that museum. Thus, the art gallery housing some of Millais’s best masterworks became the symbolic background for his monument, placed in front of the main entrance in November 1905, though it has now been relegated to John Islip Street, at the rear entrance to Tate Britain.22 A similar story, with a different ending, is that of the statue of William Etty in York, his city of birth: a standing portrait holding palette and brush, carved in stone by local sculptor George Milburn and thoughtfully placed not by the former house of the Victorian painter but in the middle of Exhibition Square in front of the city art gallery (Figure 3.6) looking across to Bootham Bar and the city walls, whose demolition he had successfully campaigned to avoid. The inauguration was a major event, attended by local

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Figure 3.6 York City Art Gallery, with the Etty Memorial in the square (Vintage postcard)

elites and crowds of people on 20 February 1911, marking a great event in local history. Since then Etty’s statue is an icon of York, where it still presides in that lively square, the main socio-cultural focus in the city, though its fragile stone has required frequent restorations, which in the long run could eventually jeopardize its permanence in situ.23

3.3 The apex and last stages of those icons, relegated by other forms of cultural branding At the turn of the century, the erection of monuments to artists in public spaces reached momentum around the Louvre Museum. At the request of painter Étienne Dujardin-Beaumetz, undersecretary of state for the fine arts from 1905 to 1912, a new ensemble of sculptures in memory of some great French artists was set up in the gardens of the Cour Napoleon. He significantly designated a square in front of the Arc du Carrousel between the great monuments to Gambetta and La Fayette for this patriotic exaltation of French art, commissioning allegorical statues for its centre and main axes, to be completed around by ten portraits of historic national architects, sculptors and painters. He called this ensemble ‘Campo Santo’, and indeed it had many parallelisms with cemeteries, memorials and shrines glorifying deceased heroes. In fact, only the first monument, installed in 1908, would represent the artist honoured in a lively attitude: the bronze statue featuring architect Jules Hardouin Mansart in a dynamic contrapposto, consulting a

58 Monuments on the fringes of museums plan stretched on his left knee. It was originally intended to be a bust, but its author, Ernest Dubois, appealed to Dujardin-Beaumetz for a more generous commission, arguing that a full-length figure would be a greater official backing to his career as a sculptor. After this precedent, others followed suit, rendering portraits in full-length figure, as in the sitting statues of the architect Pierre de Montereau and the painter Nicolas Poussin, respectively, signed by Henri Bouchard and Constant Roux, erected in 1909 and 1911 in the western side of the square. They were both made in stone, a material not suitable for dynamic arm gestures; indeed, their immobility of the portrayed is extreme, and the only hint of the outstanding activities of the two characters were the resting tools of their profession, recalling funerary traditions. Following suit, the bronze figure of sculptor Michel de Colombe by Jean Boucher not only lacked movement but also any iconographic props identifying his job, which provoked criticisms when it was installed in 1909: Henry Havard, inspecteur des beaux-arts, prescribed that a mass and chisel should be added somewhere as attributes of his trade. Yet this demand was not accomplished by the author, who never used mass or chisel, relaying physical work on his practiciens – a regular procedure used at many other successful ateliers of sculpture of that time. Furthermore, it seems that the statue of François Rude commissioned for this Campo Santo in 1911 would have also represented the great Romantic sculptor resting quietly in reflexive stance, according to the plasters produced by François Sicard, who took too long to deliver the final statue, a project discontinued at the outbreak of World War I. Sicard was quicker in the production of his other work for this ensemble, the monument to Pierre Puget, commissioned in 1907 and installed in 1910, which shares a common structure with those devoted to Watteau, Houdon and Corot commissioned in 1907, 1908 and 1909 from Henry Lombard, Paul Gasq and Raoul Larche, respectively – all installed between 1908 and 1909 – or with the monument designed by the latter in memory of Chardin – commissioned in 1911 but abandoned when Larche died the following year. These five examples endorsed again the glorification of the artist as intellectual, abiding by the original guidelines of Étienne Dujardin-Beaumetz, who had suggested a twofold structure consisting in each case of a bust portrait – the head being the outmost physiognomic evidence for character and mental creativity – on top of a pedestal decorated with revering fulllength allegorical figures that would didactically remind educated citizens of some of the most popular masterworks by the honoured artist. This dual structure was then very common in France, concomitantly propagated by some of the public statues in the Luxembourg gardens like the monument to Delacroix by Jules Dalou erected in 1890, that of Watteau by Henri Désiré Gauquié in 1896, Chopin’s effigy by Georges Dubois in 1900 or the bust of Paul Verlaine by Rodo in 1911; but it was especially appropriate for public monuments to artists in front of museums, as in the aforementioned statue of Raffet at the Jardin de l’Infante, where the allegories accompanying the bust portrait didactically evoked his most famous composition, held inside

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the Louvre. In the case of Pierre Puget, who had excelled as both architect and sculptor, his bust rested on one of the celebrated atlantes of his Toulon city hall, but the main character was a strong nude man half seated, evoking his great sculptures of Hercules, from the Louvre collection. Similarly, the bust of Houdon was towering over a Neoclassical plinth accompanied by a standing female nude figure inspired in his Diana chasseresse, also at the Louvre, whereas Chardin, Watteau and Corot would be escorted by characters from their famous pictures inside the museum: La Pourvoyeuse, Fête Champêtre and Plaisir du Soir. Such picturesque iconographies suited the graciousness supposedly prototypical of national French art, and even the artists’ portraits, all made in stone, were more animated in these five monuments, somehow approaching art nouveau style. If everything had turned out as planned, the eight finished monuments to artists erected in a circle interspersed with allegories of the fine arts would have been supplemented by the projected statues of Chardin and Rude commissioned for a contiguous square, together with sculptural homages to poets and musicians, also evoked by bust portraits, all matching the official taste for eighteenth-century gallantries or its Romantic sequels, according to Geneviève Bresc-Bautier and Anna Pingeot (1986, vol. 2: 42–407, cat. numbers 35, 36, 137, 174, 215, 235, 349, 354).24 But strangely this project promoted by Dujardin-Beaumetz had very little effect in the public sphere: no specific postcard seems to have been devoted to any of these monuments to artists; only one, indeed a rare commercial image featuring part of the Campo Santo, has been documented so far (Figure 3.7). If such visual

Figure 3.7 Statues of the Louvre’s Campo Santo (Postcard printed before World War I)

60 Monuments on the fringes of museums sources should be accounted for historical evidence of publicity success, it could be argued that as the twentieth century advanced, new monuments to artists in front of the Louvre received low-profile marketing, with mean ceremonies, scarce press coverage and no postcards printed. In the same way, further portraits of artists were installed in front of other French museums but also with somehow declining public impact. In the courtyard by the Pincé Museum of Fine Arts in Angers, a monument to local painter Jules Eugène Lenepveu – a copy of the bust portrait made in 1878 by Jean-Antoine Injalbert – was erected in 1900, two years after his death, but it would not last long, and it was hardly documented by some rare postcards. Also scarce were the postal photographs representing the bronze portrait of Bernard Palissy, erected in Sèvres next to the entrance of the National Museum of Ceramics – a 1902 replica of the monument by Louis-Ernest Barrias in Boulogne. In Paris, photo souvenirs of the Museum of Natural History featured the 1890 statue by Paul Richer representing Le Premier Artiste, installed in the gardens of the Galerie d’Anatomie Comparée et de Paleontologie, but the monument to Frémiet by Henri Greber, put up in 1913 just in front of the entrance to that gallery, would pass rather unnoticed.25 It is a ‘didactic’ monument, where the sculptor is portrayed modelling one of his most popular sculptures, while the reliefs on the pedestal represent other famous public statues by Frémiet. A double homage to the artist combining his portrait and the didactic evocation of his most inspired masterworks, as already seen in other monuments located next to the Louvre, followed a dual structure then very common for monuments to artists. This twofold iconography was also used between 1909 and 1910 by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle in a couple of sculptures in honour of Carpeaux and Rodin – respectively kept at the Musée de Lyon and the Musée Rodin. Auguste Rodin himself had originally intended this dual structure as well, combining an artist’s portrait with an evocative personage from his masterworks, for his monument to Whistler, commissioned in 1905 by the International Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, to be erected in front of their London premises. But he would never finish the figure of a naked Muse nor even began the posthumous portrait of his friend in a medallion, declaring such kind of monument obsolete. This criticism must have affected Dujardin-Beaumetz and his successors in the art administration, always eager to please Rodin, because of his growing influence amongst high-ranking politicians, especially his friend Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and 1917 to 1920 (Laurent, 1982: 103). It would have been understandable if they decided to curb the proliferation of new monuments to artists, but they did more than that, getting rid of the existing ones. In 1933 the request by the Spanish Republic of a copy of the equestrian portrait of Velázquez was generously answered with the transfer of the original sculpture to Madrid.26 The same year all monuments to artists of the Louvre’s Campo Santo were also taken away – with the exception of Poussin’s, which was removed in 1934, being subsequently

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disseminated to distant sites. More than a change in taste, this could arguably reflect the political diplomacies of republican statesmen dealing with other territorial authorities: as the national art purchases and collections were partly distributed to cities in the provinces, some monuments hitherto accumulated in the gardens of the Louvre were now dispersed, often sent to the hometowns of the great men honoured. Far from questioning the existence of monuments to architects, painters and sculptors as urban landmarks identifying an art district, the cultural policies of that transitional moment ended up spreading those symbolic markers throughout France, as the new locations chosen were often neighbourhoods in provincial cities somehow related to the masterworks of the respective artists.27 In Tours, Marseilles and Valenciennes, the statues arriving from Paris were located in the surroundings of art museums: the two latter instances still remain in those cultural districts. However, even if the destruction of patriotic monuments during the war did not deal the final blow, this typology of monument gradually became outfashioned in France and almost everywhere else. As the twentieth century advanced, these icons entered a critical stage in urban spaces. New statues of artists became rare, with belated exceptions like the posthumous bust of Julio Antonio by his disciple Enrique Lorenzo Salazar, which was inaugurated in 1921 in the street gardens of the National Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. Yet these monumental portraits were no longer in vogue. Allegorical sculptures in honour of the arts or other disciplines would still adorn the squares and green areas adjacent to any museum, where statues of its political sponsors and generous art patrons continued to be erected. But in order to honour artists, it seemed now preferable to exalt their masterpieces, not their likeness.28 Perhaps one of the most eloquent cases was the controversial Cézanne monument commissioned in 1925 by a public subscription for his hometown, Aix-en-Provence, whose city council had intended to erect it before the Museum of Fine Arts, but the proposal found massive rejection, which led indirectly to its installation four years later in Paris by the stairs outside the Musée Monet at the Tuileries Orangerie. A very discrete action – no postcards were printed, or at least I have not found any – facing objections from the Comité des Monuments, jeopardized its continuity there.29 It is not clear whether they were opposing a monument to the notorious PostImpressionist painter or its innovative artistic conception, whose author, Aristide Maillol, had merely sculpted a bathing female figure inspired by Cézanne’s paintings, no longer accompanied by a portrait of the artist honoured. Similarly, Pablo Picasso, who was commissioned in 1928 to create a monument to his deceased friend Guillaume Apollinaire, insisted on delivering not a portrait of him but poetic metaphors, which were first rejected but eventually materialized. Erstwhile the social circles of art professionals and their entourage had been the most enthusiastic promoters of public statues portraying artists,

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but now the apostles of modernity no longer felt identified with that type of homage. And it was not only around the national museums in France that the sculptural portraits of artists were in crisis, notwithstanding some hesitations. In Madrid, Goya’s sitting monument donated by José Llaneces had become in 1925 property of the city council, which transferred it to the Casa de la Villa: hence the landscaped square in front of the northern entrance to the museum looked quite empty for a while.30 It was eventually filled in 1945 with the famous walking portrait of Goya made in 1902 by sculptor Mariano Benlliure; indeed, it had ‘walked’ around different areas of the capital prior to its definitive position there, facing the Prado Museum. Another immediate example emerged in front of the garden of the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao, where the new building opened in 1945, the year the painter Ignacio Zuloaga died. Thus, a bust of him made by his friend, the sculptor Julio Beobide, was placed in 1947 before the museum on a lawn amidst flowerbeds, not far from Francisco Durrio’s allegorical monument to the composer Arriaga – a ‘musical’ fountain – and other pieces of an expanding sculpture garden. Some other instances would still appear before museums from other parts of the world.31 But by the middle of the twentieth century, the heydays of this type of monument had well passed. In fact, the last portraits of artists still remaining in the Louvre gardens were removed in the 1960s on the orders of minister André Malraux, who curiously enough had established in 1943 legal protection for a circumference of five hundred metres aux abords d’un Monument Historique in order to keep preserved the surroundings of national heritage monuments. Overlooking the historic value of this outdoor collection, which had survived the Nazi occupation, the renowned author of the book Museums without Walls dismantled a perimuseal ensemble of statues out of the Louvre! And, following that precedent, monuments of artists which stood in front of other museums were also removed elsewhere. In many cases we can only glean what such monumental traditions represented through the testimony of old postcards whose abundance suitably indicates how popular some monuments must have been and what iconographies were most successful as attractions. We can even gather from these postcards what the prevalent viewpoints were: sometimes a panoramic urban glance was sought, but often a specific statue was singled out, either photographed in profile or facing the camera in order to better draw attention to the neighbouring museum. But nineteenth-century postcards of monuments only identified the celebrities portrayed, never naming the author of the statue. This was in consonance with the information provided in their pedestals and with the value then attached to monuments in urban spaces. Even those belonging to museum collections and displayed just outside the doors would not usually be thoroughly labelled; therefore, they could hardly be perceived by citizens as ambitious artworks, created by reputable sculptors. Iconographic purposes prevailed, both regarding the statues and their postcard reproductions while, in either case, they were instrumental for a greater visibility in

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public imagination. Thus, it could be concluded that the proliferation at the turn of the century of monuments to artists and postcards featuring them had played an ‘iconic’ role in many senses, as they served to frame museums in public cultural consumption and to identify some urban districts as appealing art centres. They invested these neighbourhoods with a peculiar glamourous aura, which contributed to pinpointing them as ‘cultural districts’.

Notes 1 Both texts could exemplify rules of decorum in force well into the nineteenth century, as Gaehtgens and Wedekind argue in the introduction to their book where many cases are analyzed. For instance, an exedra built between 1734 and 1735 in the gardens of Stowe House, Buckinghamshire, included sixteen niches decorated with the busts of prominent British figures that paid homage to kings and other historical heroes as well as to some scientists, philosophers, writers and one architect. Or the aforementioned monument to Handel in London, so successful that in the middle of the eighteenth century it was moved from its original location – amidst bushes in a discreet piazza near the concert area – to the busiest spot in Vauxhall, the centre of a purpose-built square, while in 1786 it was placed behind the orchestra and soon afterwards in a niche inside the restaurant hall. Where the sitting statues of Voltaire made by Houdon and Pigalle should be placed was also the subject of hesitation. Pigalle’s statute, despite having been paid for by public subscription, was not placed in a public square. The same occurred in German cities with the monuments to Lessing, Goethe and Schiller. Conversely, the grandest public space in Padua, the Prato della Valle, accommodated the standing statues of contemporary eminent figures, such as the portrait of scientist Giovanni Poleni made between 1779 and 1780 by Canova (cf. Gaehtgens & Wedekind, 2009). 2 It is one of Dominique Poulot’s favourite examples. He also mentions the case of Lubersac de Livron, another essayist who envisaged in 1783 an alteration of Paris, including a square near the Tuileries for public festivals and a square near the Arc du Carrousel equally adorned with monuments (Poulot, 2004: 125). 3 In Rome, Florence and many other Italian cities, monuments to Dante were erected in politically relevant locations (Villa, 2011). It is significant that those portraits of the writer overshadowed or delayed Romantic projects of sculptures to Giotto, Rafael or Michelangelo. The piazzale Michelangelo overlooking Florence from a hillock also dates from 1865, though the monument to the artist was not erected until 1873. 4 The 1827 proposal had been put forward by a painter from Antwerp: Matthieu Van Bree. The bronze monument inaugurated in 1840 was made by sculptor W. Geerfs, the author of other Romantic monuments in Liège and Brussels dedicated to great ‘Belgians’: a new national identity which retrospectively adopted Rubens as a historical icon – despite the fact that he had been born in Germany – because his subscription to Catholic baroque taste and his political-diplomatic career differentiated him from Dutch culture, as was also the case of his disciple Van Dyck and other Flemish painters whose artistic idiom, unlike the language they spoke, bore no affinity to the Dutch (Stroobants, 1999). 5 Dürer personified the German prototype both physically and in his artwork. In the nineteenth century, he also attracted the interest of supporters of unification as a symbol of concord beyond denominational divisions, for although he had worked for the German Holy Roman Empire and did not renounce Catholicism, he maintained good relations with the Lutherans.

64 Monuments on the fringes of museums 6 After the faux pas of a first local competition for the sculpture, for which five projects were submitted though none was selected, the Fine Arts Academy of Madrid organized in 1858 another nation-wide competition which was won by Madrid sculptor Sabino Medina, a member of the academy and former fellow in Rome. The design of the pedestal took even longer because after several competitions and awards, the commission was given to architect Demetrio de los Ríos, who had to endure endless administrative obstacles between his patrons in Madrid and his promoters in Seville (Gállego, 1982; Géal, 2005: 298–301). 7 Some eloquent instances are the statue erected in 1864 to the tycoon William Dargan in front of the National Gallery of Ireland founded thanks to him, or the equestrian monument of 1886 to Frederick William IV of Prussia in front of the Nationalgalerie of Berlin he had founded, or the enormous sculpture erected two years later to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in the square of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum of Vienna. 8 The main facade of the Museo del Prado had been decorated between 1830 and 1831 with sixteen medallions with the heads of celebrated Spanish artists. They were the work of the royal sculptor Ramón Barba to mark the new artistic use of the building which had originally been conceived as a museum of natural science. But this series of portraits did not necessarily act as an advertisement to pedestrians of the artists represented in the art collection displayed inside. This apparent inconsequence was usual in the mural decoration of many museum buildings. For instance, the Kunsthalle of Hamburg owns no works by Bramante, Leonardo and Michelangelo, but they feature in the medallions decorating it; similarly, the Museum of Antwerp dedicates busts to Velázquez, Michelangelo or Rafael; the Museum of Lille displays the portraits of Titian and Velázquez, and on the facades of the museums of Marseille and Grenoble, I have also verified that many of those invoked in script or in medallions do not figure amongst their respective collections. Thus, that ‘pantheon’ of acclaimed artists served above all as a prestigious decoration to give an illustrious air on art museums, all the more useful as an element of validation the more modest and provincial the museum concerned was. Lacking works by the most acclaimed artists within, their effigies were placed outside, as tutelary saints for the institutions. Due to this, even the museums of contemporary art, given that they specialized in artists who had not yet become established in posterity, were anxious to surround themselves with this aura of glorious effigies. This was the case of the busts of David, Gros, Rude, Prud’hon, Ingres, Delacroix and other masters from the early nineteenth century placed in the orangerie of the Luxembourg Park in Paris when the so-called Musée des Artistes Vivants was opened there in 1886, despite the fact that those artists had already died and their works were by then displayed at the Louvre. 9 There are many free-standing statues of artists flanking the main entrance to some nineteenth-century museums throughout Europe, yet they are not monuments placed in the city landscape but sculptures used for the decoration of the museum building. Even the cases of free-standing effigies which are not physically attached to the facade but close to it should be considered part of their architectural ornament: for instance, the two statues of Rafael and Michelangelo placed in 1877 at both sides of the access steps to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, because the sculptor John Warrington Wood was commissioned to do the work along with an allegory of the city of Liverpool which crowns the entrance, by brewer Andrew Barclay Walker, who had committed himself to pay for the construction and decoration of this municipal museum. Likewise, most of the statues flanking the entrances to museums are but an extraordinarily protuberant part of the decoration of the building. One of many such cases is, for instance, the sitting statues of Poussin and Michel Angier, signed by Hiolle in 1884, placed on each side of the front stairs of the Rouen Art Museum, or the standing portraits of Berruguete and Velázquez,

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flanking the entrance to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid – a building by Francisco Jareño de Alarcón inaugurated in 1895 as Palacio de Biblioteca y Museos Nacionales because it housed not only an archaeological museum but also several art museums (Lorente, 2014). Strictly speaking we may not consider as such some statues of artists ornamenting the Jardin du Luxembourg. The monument to Delacroix, made by Jules Dalou in 1885, was installed five years later in the Allée des Platanes of the Luxembourg park, a location ceded by the Senate, seeking proximity to this palace, whose library had been decorated by the Romantic painter. Thus, it was placed near the Senate building, not at all in the vicinity of the Museum of Living Artists. Then, this monument to Delacroix in a park so full of monuments of illustrious characters must have been a reference for the introduction there of new monuments to artists, such as the one dedicated to Watteau, by Henri Désiré Gauquié, commissioned in 1896. It is also documented in that book (in a footnote on page 151 of the first volume) that some critics raised nationalist objections – for example, Alphonse de Calonne, a right-wing cultural journalist who aired on 18 June 1894 in Le Soleil his regrets, stating ‘on n’eut pas dû commencer par Velásquez’ – he would have preferred starting with Watteau – and consequently he wanted only monuments to French artists henceforth. Alisa Luxenberg has documented how Frémiet was prepared to change the identity of the portrayed should the monument be dedicated to anybody else. Velázquez prevailed: his statue embodied the intense political and cultural relations between Spain and France at that time (Luxenberg, 1999). Apparently, it was a bestselling icon for customers nostalgic of the Grande Armée, with its bronze ornaments of combative iconography stirring French sentiments of revenge after the 1871 defeat in the war with Prussia: they were all removed under Nazi occupation, and only the stone sculpture and column remained afterwards for more than two decades. These verses to Watteau could have caused the mistake in the identification of the portrait, and they may well be the reason for the greater fortune and endurance of that statue in situ. François Boucher’s portrait by Jean-Paul Aubé was retired from the Louvre gardens in 1966; ten years later it was attributed to the Musée National d’Art Moderne, which deposited it in 1981 at the Municipal Museum of Longwy, the Lorrenaise birth town of the sculptor. Removed by order of Minister André Malraux in 1966, the marble portrait of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonnier was held for some time in unclear status, as it had never been ascribed to the Louvre. This was done in 1980 so that the national museum could send it in deposit to the city of Poissy, of which the painter had been major in 1878, installed in the municipal park bearing his name, to replace the Meissonier monument in bronze, founded in 1942 (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, 2nd vol.: 337–339). The projected monument to Vernet was commented on in a sceptical press article ‘Nos grands hommes’, Le Petit Parisien, 29 marzo 1898: ‘Les manifestations patriotiques sont rares aujourd’hui dans la statuaire, pour Paris du moins, qui a fini d’édifier les monuments dus à ses morts. Par contre, on continue à marmoriser ou à couler en bronze nombre de personnalités littéraires et artistiques. Le Jardin de l’Infante et le Jardin du Luxembourg se peuplent de bustes entourés de poétiques allégories. Un culte nouveau est rendu aux rimeurs et aux peintres, aux princes de la bohème et de la littérature facile. On pourrait mieux faire et nous comptons dans notre Panthéon d’autres dieux que Watteau, Boucher, Murger, Verlaine, Meissonier ou l’Espagnol Velasquez’. Escaping various melting menaces during the Nazi occupation, the bronze monument to Gérôme remained in this garden of the Louvre in front of the Protestant Oratory until 1967, when it was placed in storage and deposited from 1971

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to 1980 within the military fort of Mont-Valérien. Restored in 1971, it was attributed to the Musée d’Orsay, where it is on display today. This gesture is taken from the self-portrait in Las Meninas, as Carlos Reyero rightly spotted. Reyero has repeatedly echoed the criticisms Marinas received for portraying the painter sitting down, something which ‘may not be conceived at all’, as Balsa de la Vega wrote in El Liberal when the author presented the plaster cast at the National Exhibition of 1899, being awarded the gold medal (Reyero, 1996: 32, 2002: 250). Reyero also considers this stance a historical incongruence or an attempt at presenting an artist from the seventeenth century working in the manner of a nineteenth-century middle-class painter. This is not the case because he is not working while sitting on an armchair, but resting and meditating (Reyero, 1999: 214), somehow stressing Leonardo’s argument that painting è cosa mentale – which was appropriate for Velázquez to recall in order to be appointed a knight of the Order of Santiago, whose cross is displayed on his chest. José Llaneces made his name first as a painter, above all in Paris, where he lived splendidly for fourteen years exploiting the market of costumbrismo with paintings of bulls, greatcoat scenes or other Goyaesque fantasies. But at the turn of the century, under the patronage of Queen María Cristina, he was even more successful in Madrid as a sculptor, for he is remembered above all by the monuments he was commissioned to do in Madrid and Buenos Aires. The pivotal point in his career was precisely the sitting statue of Goya he presented to the State as a tribute to the inspirer of his genre paintings. Leticia Azcue, curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Prado, has documented that the plaster version of this sculpture was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1900 and that its bronze version was registered at the Prado Museum in 1901 (Azcue, 2012: 125, footnote 150). But she kept the date of its conception in 1890, following the chronology previously proposed by Professor María Socorro Salvador (1990: 115). The face of the genius is unquestionably Van Dyck’s, based on early self-portraits by the painter, but that statue was removed in 2011 during renovation work at the museum, leaving only the pedestal in the gardens of Plaatsnijdersstraat. Given that by the middle of the twentieth century, public esteem towards Millais and his contemporaries was at its lowest, the management of the museum put forward several requests for the relocation of the monument. In the 1960s the director of the Tate, Norman Reid, tried to negotiate with the Ministry of Works the exchange of Brock’s statue for John the Baptist by Rodin. After the State transferred the property of this sculpture to the Tate, in November 2000 it was moved to the rear gardens, next to a side door. To commemorate its centenary in 2011, York City Art Gallery organized in 2011 an exhibition titled William Etty: Art and Controversy. Several times the removal of Etty’s statue has been considered, but the city had always refused because this statue is a local icon. In fact, it often features in blogs and websites about York. However, they have not documented the reasons for the sudden crisis of this Campo Santo, which they vaguely justify by a social decline of the statuomania, arguing as proof of this change in taste that the city council of Paris had prohibited in January 1910 new statues at the Monceau Park and the Champs-Elysées (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, 1st vol.: 149); but this municipal veto could not affect monuments planned by State officials for the gardens surrounding national monuments. Since 1892 Frémiet had been professor of animal iconography at the Natural History Museum of Paris, which commissioned from him some popular statues, like his Man fighting with a Bear, at the gardens of the zoological menagerie. Precisely working on this sculpture we see here Frémiet portrayed by Greber, while the pedestal is decorated with images of his Bear cub thief and his famous

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equestrian monument to Joan of Arc. Today we can spot beautiful photos of the sculptor’s statue standing by the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, but my research has not found any single postcard devoted to it, while there are plenty of such commercial images of Frémiet’s Parisian monuments. In 1928 the French government inaugurated in Madrid a hall of residence for artists and scholars known as Casa de Velázquez; five years later, the Spanish Republic asked for permission to make a reproduction of this equestrian statue to decorate its surroundings with a monument to the eponymous painter. Instead, the French government decided to send the original bronze, which was installed in the gardens of the square in front of its main entrance – there is now a replica in its place because the original bronze was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. In July 1933 the monument to Pierre Puget was taken to Marseilles, his hometown, where another monument to him already existed in the city centre, so this new statue was placed in a landscaped area of the Boulevard Montricher, opposite the art museum. The portrait of Michel Colombe was moved in September 1933 to Tours, where he had created his best sculptures to decorate the cathedral, though his bust was located next to the art museum, where it was cast during Nazi occupation and replaced after the war with a stone statue made by Pierre Dandelot. The monument to Watteau was also removed in 1933, but it took some time to find its destination, and only in 1937 was it sent to Valenciennes, the painter’s birth town, where a monument in his honour already adorned the main square, so this new monument was placed in a landscaped square before the entrance to the art museum. The statue of Corot was also in store from mid1933, awaiting a new location; not before 1935 was it sent to Avray, where the painter used to own a cottage; but they already had a monument there, and his statue was taken to the square in front of the church. The same happened with the monument to Houdon, sent to Lisieux in 1935 and placed in the Jardin Publique. Similarly removed in 1933, the monument dedicated to Pierre de Montereau was dispatched by the end of 1935 to the gardens surrounding the basilica of Saint-Denis, where that medieval sculptor worked for so long. Also removed in 1933, the portrait of Mansart was eventually placed in front of Les Invalides, the most famous building created by this architect. The statue of Poussin was the last to quit the Campo Santo in July 1934, and it was sent afterwards to Andelys, the hometown of the painter (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, 2nd vol.: 42–407). A curious precedent was set in Rome on the occasion of the urban development of Villa Borghese as a new artistic district of the Italian capital, where an esplanade of the Viale delle Belle Arti, next to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, was decorated in 1925 with a monument to the genius of Thorvaldsen donated by the Copenhagen municipal corporation, but they simply installed a monumental replica of his famous Jason, with no portrait of the Danish sculptor. The monument, which was then moved to various sites in the Tuileries, would be replaced in 1943 by a lead version that remains in that garden, overlooking the Louvre, while the original marble version is in the Musée d’Orsay (Krings, 1999; Kolkytha, 2016). Since 1986 this sitting statue of Goya is in the Glorieta of San Antonio of Florida, next to the hermitage where this painter is buried. In 1953 the municipal corporation of Bogotá transferred to the gardens in front of the entrance of the National Museum the monument to the outstanding Colombian painter Epifanio Garay, a bust in stone that had originally been located in 1922 in Ayacucho Square. In 2007, the portrait of the painter Fernando de Amarica was made by Julio López Hernández, placed before the Museum of Fine Arts of Vitoria.

Part II

Modern arcadias

4

High culture on urban heights The mouseion ideal as city crown

Mountains like Mount Fuji or Mount Carmel are of mythical significance for some religions being metaphors of sublimation and seclusion, where illustrious holy men reside in order to attain communion with a higher spiritual level.1 These types of myths inspired modern literary reinterpretations, such as the utopian Shangri-La envisaged by James Milton in his book Lost Horizon or Thomas Mann’s novel Der Zauberberg, a mixture of fiction and autobiography. In real history, mountains within view of cities have served as a natural or superhuman reference beyond everyday life: who or what is placed at the top in each historical period overlooking the urban landscape necessarily becomes quite prominent. Many cities were founded on mountaintops or are crowned by hills, traditionally used as bastions of defence, religious sanctuaries, palaces for the mighty or some other exalted symbols. Not surprisingly, they have always been as well favourite emplacements for cultural districts: we have considered in the previous chapters the significance of monuments and palatial architectures as landmarks of art precints, whose recognition as such was sanctioned when they often featured in urban vistas circulating in the public sphere in all kinds of media, from pictures and prints to postcards. In this chapter another kind of visibility will be added, which could be called ‘mountainous conspicuousness’. Echoing the theories of Jonathan Crary about the observer in the nineteenth century, it is tempting to consider not just the educational influence of optical devices on the institutionalization of the gaze but also from a broader social perspective the influence of visionary traditions on the urban perceptibility of art and artists. Cultural districts were more easily identified if they were situated on a hill, as heirs of a long intellectual genealogy. ‘Acropolis’ is a Greek noun frequently used to designate such haughty positions over life in the polis. Mount Mouseion, one of the hills surrounding Athens, has also made an indelible imprint on European languages. The name, an allusion to its legendary dedication to the goddesses of literature, science and the arts, became renowned because of the cultural complex which for centuries dominated the skyline of ancient Alexandria and produced our term museum (Ruggieri & Vacirca, 1998: 116). As a concept, the latter today has little in common with its etymological meaning as a temple or residence of

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the Muses – mouseion in Greek and musaeum in Latin – though, as we shall see here, our museums have not fully rid themselves of these topographic and mythical connotations. Cultural institutions have often been built at urban heights, granting visitors not only access to collections displayed indoors but also the chance to enjoy panoramic views from a monumental vantage point commonly perceived as an identifying icon of the respective city. Many museums continue to stand on top of hills, and the people visiting them seem to ascend into cultural sublimation above and beyond commoner pursuits. A landmark in the modern intellectual re-elaboration of that classical heritage in the early twentieth century was the notion of the Stadtkröne – the crown of the city – a broadly used designation ever since. It is often attributed to Bruno Taut, who conceived with this name an ambitious museological/ religious complex on top of a hill, intended as the culmination of an art settlement on the outskirts of Hagen for the tycoon Karl Ernst Osthaus and his adherents. Its most spectacular German precedent was the Mathildenhöhe of Darmstadt estate by Archduke Ernst Ludwig, a statesman deeply influenced by the Romantic ideal of the Künstlerstaat. In both cases the starting point was a private residential estate perceived as a public space open to all, particularly to their fellow citizens, no matter that its priority was to act as the residence of artists, intellectuals and other élites. Incidentally, it is quite significant that its promoters insisted on using the term Kunstlerkolonie, heedlessly omitting the fact that most houses in these two ‘art colonies’ were not occupied by artists but by local moguls: as if they were all part of a kinship of hoi olligoi, almost a polis above and beyond common urban society. In this too they followed the trail of other utopian city planners whose inspiration also originated in classical sources.

4.1 Cultural promontories in urban utopias from antiquity to the nineteenth century This urban paradigm corresponds to the ideal defended for centuries in a long-standing tradition of political-social-moral treatises, including Plato’s Republic or Saint Augustine’s City of God, which had inspired many new cities. That was the case of the Sforzinda imagined (around 1464) by Antonio di Pietro Averlino, alias Filarete, whose design structured in concentric circles was crowned by a religious/cultural shrine. It is an urban layout frequently found in many imaginary cities that were branded as ‘utopian’ after the publication of Thomas More’s renowned humanistic work, Utopia (1516), which in turn was followed by several sequels: Christianopolis by J. V. Andrae (1619), La Città del Sole by Tomasso Campanella (1623), New Atlantis by Francis Bacon (1626) and Hygeia by Benjamin Ward Richardson (1876). These utopian writings became a subgenre within fantasy literature – including Franceville by Jules Verne (1879), the African Freiland by Hertzka (1890) and A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells (1905). Wise and virtuous men deserved special consideration in the eyes of the authors of such urban utopias which, from Plato to Cabet, had often excluded

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art and artists. But education repeatedly played a core part in those imaginary cities where, standing prominently in the middle used to be placed a so-called museum, combining three meanings: firstly, a set of monumental temples or memorials; secondly, the headquarters of activities related to science, literature or the arts; and, finally, some collections of extraordinary specimens.2 These institutions were marked by an imposing architecture finished off with a classical pediment or by other stately constructions on top of a hill: such as those envisaged in 1609 by Bartolomeo Del Bene at the top of his Civitas Veri. In parallel, the ideal genealogy of other utopias which placed the workshops and residences of select artists on elevated areas would recurrently refer to the summit of Parnassus, a mountain in ancient Greece where stood a school of poetry surrounded by statues in honour of deities linked to the arts and literature. These higher grounds were thus viewed by classical culture as a heavenly place for gathering renowned writers and artists, depicted in Renaissance iconography with laurel wreaths as heroes exalted, also from a topographic point of view, upon a vantage point.3 At times their pavilions, crowned by cupulas, are redolent, even in their urban location, of the temple designed by Bramante for San Pietro in Montorio on the Roman Janiculum. It was particularly in Rome where these Parnassian art communities came to fruition. On the upper parts of the city, several art academies, museums or other cultural institutions concentrated, such as the Capitoline art schools and art gallery, or the French Academy, situated on top of the Pincian Hill since the seventeenth century, and the palazzo Zuccari which prior to housing the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Max Planck Institute for Art History was the venue for the German Academy in the nineteenth century. Beautiful scenery may also be contemplated from other foreign residences for artists in Rome, such as the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts, located since 1874 precisely in the former convent of San Pietro in Montorio, on the same hill later to be crowned by the American Academy in Rome. This Parnassian ideal reached its peak particularly in nineteenth-century German culture from Schiller and Goethe to Richard Wagner, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann and other leading figures not only from the world of art and literature but also from politics and finance, who were enthused by that social utopia where artists occupied the top of the pyramid of power based on an ideal known in German as Künstlerstaat or Ästhetische Staat (Raulff, 2006). Thus, it was probably not incidentally that the Germans designed not only a grandiose pantheon for prominent men in history, the Walhalla, built by order of Ludwig I of Bavaria on a hill on the outskirts of Regensburg, but also multiple artist communities and towns located on mountaintops, such as Dachau in the Alps or Kronberg-im-Taunus in Hesse (Wietek, 1976). German culture has always felt a fascination for forests, particularly after the Romantic doctrines of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, of considerable influence over many community settlements, both artistic and non-artistic: even the naturist colony of Monte Verità.4 Based on this cultural substratum, venerated as a modern Arcadia, Bruno Taut developed his never fulfilled Alpine ideal, an urban and architectural dream which somehow could be related to the book Die

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Städtebau nach der Künsterischen Grundsätzen, published in Vienna in 1889 by urban planner Camillo Sitte, who actually defended a vertical approach for cities and was very critical of utopias based on mere geometric designs. This cultural reference should also be taken into account to understand Josep Maria Olbrich’s urban planning conceptions. The famous words he addressed to his colleagues on the occasion of celebrating the completion of the Vienna Secession exhibition building in 1898 are often incompletely quoted. He announced his desire to build a city, an entire city, no less: Eine Stadt müssen wir erbauen, eine ganze Stadt! Alles Andere ist nichts! It is true that to do so he simply requested a green field – a well-known demand repeated some years later by Le Corbusier for his Musée des Artistes Vivants. Many have, however, neglected the fact that Olbrich suggested placing it on the outskirts of Vienna, in the Hietzing woods or on the hill of Hohe Warte. Die Regierung soll uns, in Hietzing oder auf der Hohen Warte, ein Feld geben, und da wollen wir dann eine Welt schaffen. Das heißt doch nichts, wenn Einer bloß ein Haus baut. Wie kann das schön sein, wenn daneben ein hässliches ist? Was nützen drei, fünf, zehn schöne Häuser, wenn die Anlage der Straße keine schöne ist? Was nützt die schöne Straße mit schönen Häusern, wenn darin die Sessel nicht schön sind oder die Teller nicht schön sind? Nein – ein Feld; anders ist es nicht zu machen. Ein leeres weites Feld; und da wollen wir dann zeigen, was wir können; in der ganzen Anlage und bis ins letzte Detail. Alles von demselben Geiste beherrscht, die Straßen und die Gärten und die Paläste und die Hütten und die Tische und die Sessel und die Leuchter und die Löffel Ausdrücke der selben Empfindung, in der Mitte aber, wie ein Tempel in einem heiligen Haine, ein Haus der Arbeit, zugleich Atelier der Künstler und Werkstätte der Handwerker, wo nun der Künstler immer das beruhigende und ordnende Handwerk, der Handwerker immer die befreiende und reinigende Kunst neben sich hätte, bis die beiden gleichsam zu einer einzigen Person verwachsen würden!5 Hence this vision of creating a new city around a temple of the arts on a green hill did not involve starting from scratch but would be located in a suburb of the capital. And as we shall see next, when Olbrich came to fulfil this dream on a hill near the capital of the state of Hesse, he did not exactly start from an empty field, as the site already contained elements of landscape and architectural heritage as well as political symbolism which becomes clear to the eye of anyone observing the panorama from the top.

4.2 The Mathildenhöhe: high court and Gesamtkunstwerk Darmstadt is a city on the Rhine dominated by a hill where once stood a ducal palace and its gardens. This layout was the symbol of power, opened to the citizens by Grand Duke Louis III of Hesse and his wife, Mathilde, in

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whose honour it was named Mathildenhöhe. In the Romantic period, trees and a few cottages surrounded this spot; in the last third of the nineteenth century, water cisterns to supply the city were built on top of the hill as well as a quaint Russian orthodox chapel, donated by tsar Nicolas II, who had married Princess Alexandra, the sister of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig. This lord within a constitutional regime, who was supposed to remain above and beyond politics and government work, was fond of theatre, music and the arts, a passion he inherited from his mother, Grand Duchess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria of England. She had also instilled in him an interest in William Morris’s proposals on matters of architecture and art. Consequently, in 1897 he engaged British Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott and Charles Robert Ashbee, members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, as interior designers. He did so prompted by publisher Alexander Koch, a great advocate of this movement in Germany whose company was located in Darmstadt and who had published, amongst other things, the journals Innendekoration and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. Koch put the grand duke in touch with German artists of this trend and in 1898 produced a memorandum written by Georg Fuchs proposing the creation in Darmstadt of a school or centre for designer artists. This request was later expanded, adding that the city also needed an exhibition hall for the public to view the latest in architecture, interior design and the like. Ernst Ludwig seemed to be willing to do this and much more. At a time when the German elite were fascinated by the influential book The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, published by Jacob Buckhardt in 1860, many considered art a matter for the State and believed that a good ruler ought to excel as a patron of the arts. In that context it was hardly surprising that after having commissioned a plan to build a group of elegant villas and gardens known as Villenkolonie on the Mathildenhöhe, the grand duke started calling it Kuntlerkolonie. That ‘colony of artists’ deserved to be led by an up-and-coming figure. During a trip to Paris in 1898, Ernst Ludwig contacted Alsatian sculptor François Rupert Carabin and offered him a house and a generous salary if he would move to Darmstadt. The successful French artist declined the invitation on patriotic grounds.6 That same year, however, another promising figure of the art nouveau in Paris, German painter Hans Christiansen, took up the offer. Both Rupert Carabin and Christiansen had a good relationship with the Secession artists in Vienna, a city Ernst Ludwig knew well. Architect Joseph Maria Olbrich arrived from there in 1899 and was soon joined by the five other founding members: Peter Behrens, sculptors Ludwig Habich and Rudolf Bosselt, as well as Paul Bürck, a painter and textile designer, plus Patriz Huber, an architect, painter and sculptor. At just twenty-one years of age, Bürck and Huber were the youngest, while the eldest, Christiansen and Olbrich, were thirty-three and thirtytwo, respectively. They were all promised accommodation and an annual salary for at least three years.7 They initially stayed at the Prinz-Georg-Palais in Darmstadt until the new buildings were ready on the Mathildenhöhe,

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where Ernst Ludwig wished to have a house built with workshops for his artists which might occasionally be used for temporary exhibitions open to the public. In reality it was intended as a second home for his personal use whenever he wanted to reside there with his sponsored artists, the main users of this common space for meeting at the summit, which would also be open to the public on the occasion of exhibitions and which today houses the Museum Künstlerkolonie. Olbrich had already designed other exhibition buildings and had become famous thanks to the Secession-Haus of Vienna. It was therefore a matter of course that the grand duke should ask him to build the central headquarter, as he had so enthusiastically adhered to the Kuntlerkolonie. Instead of drawing wide radial avenues, Olbrich reused the pre-existing serpentine paths and rose gardens, achieving a successful urban symbiosis of art with nature. The unity of aesthetic taste that reigns in the Mathildenhöhe is his lifework, as he was the architect chosen to design most of the new buildings. Christiansen, however, got the largest house, befitting its initial status in the Kuntlerkolonie,8 somehow paired in a preferential position with Olbrich’s, both houses situated on each side of the main building, as featured in a vintage postcard (Figure 4.1). As for the other residents, only Habich and Behrens decided they could afford to have their own houses built, despite the grand duke offering all of them comfortable terms with regard to purchase of the site and financing the construction, provided all eight houses were finished by the inaugural exhibition in 1901. The other artists’ houses were therefore replaced by residences of some magnates from Darmstadt who had four beautiful villas built.

Figure 4.1 Panoramic view of the Mathildenhöhe hill in the opening exhibition of 1901 (Vintage postcard)

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This seeming return to the original idea of a Villenkolonie did not appear to question the concept of ‘art colony’ so zealously supported by Olbrich, who took on the role of leader of the group. Save for Peter Behrens, who did not submit to the domineering Viennese architect and chose to design his house himself: a bold decision, as he was simply a painter and decorator. He thus started a new career as a self-taught architect. His house was the cheapest, its austerity and lack of ornaments – striking amidst the highly decorated buildings in the neighbourhood – foreshadowed his most famous building, the AEG turbine factory in Berlin. Nonetheless, Behrens may not yet be considered a ‘functionalist’ because of his strong inclination towards symbolism, noticeable in the metaphoric diamond shapes and lamps in his house and in the famous poster he designed for the inaugural exhibition. On 15 May 1901, Behrens personally directed the esoteric ceremony of public opening, devised by Georg Fuchs, one of the intellectual promoters of the colony. The latter chose a literary text and a theatre performance as a Zarathustrian parable: a ‘Greek chorus’ of performers dressed in white tunics conversed with a man and a woman in black, the allegories of humankind, clamouring for art’s healing redemption. In response to their invocations, a bearded prophet in a scarlet cloak appeared and proclaimed that the place would become the temple of a priesthood of art. He then solemnly marched towards the grand duke and gave him something he had concealed in his hand, a crystal, the symbol of the artists’ alchemical work. The open air stage of this performance was appropriately placed on the flight of steps amongst the terraced gardens inherited from the former rose garden of the Romantic park: a central axis presided over at the top by the Ernst Ludwig Haus, where the workshops of the seven artists were to be located, open to the public on occasion as an exhibition centre. Its entrance had been decorated by Olbrich with the motto Seine Welt zeige der Künstler die niemals war noch jemals sein wird engraved in golden letters, as enigmatic as the inscription decorating his Secession-Haus in Vienna. Much has been speculated on the meaning of all this;9 though all historians dealing with the colony usually focus on architectural matters without revealing much about the sociology of this community10 or hardly paying any attention to the rich decorative agenda gradually implemented on the Mathildenhöhe with other forms of ‘public art’. And yet the art nouveau’s struggle to integrate all arts is key to understanding this colony as conceived by Olbrich. Like his master Otto Wagner, he also gave statues and other ornaments a prominent role in his architectural designs. This can still be noted in the monumental facade of the Ernst Ludwig Haus, flanked by the goddesses of Victory, created by sculptor Rudolf Bosselt. Two colossal statues of a naked man and woman were placed on each side of the archivolt – they already appeared in the first preparatory sketches of the project – representing Strength and Beauty, the attributes of new mankind. In his own house, Olbrich-Haus, he placed the statue

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of a young man kneeling to drink in the outer corner of his garden to be admired by passers-by along Mathildenhöheweg. The figure was the work of sculptor Habich, who also made another monumental statue placed in the central street of the colony.11 There are also decorations carved in wood in a corner of the facade of the little house designed for sculptor Rudolf Bosselt, bought while still under construction by affluent furniture manufacturer Julius Glückert, thus becoming Kleine Haus Glückert, his small house, as the same furniture tycoon had another ostentatious house built right next to it, the Große Haus Glückert, used by his company as a display room for furniture and interior decoration. On the other hand, we have only old drawings and photos to envision other temporary installations created by Olbrich and his colleagues. For instance, the access portal to the inaugural exhibition of 1901, decorated by Paul Bürck with allegoric mural paintings; or the Spielhaus theatre where the grand duke engaged poet Wilhelm Holzamer to stage literary recitals during that summer; or the bandstand where the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Vienna used to play for visitors, who could also access a restaurant pavilion decorated with stained glass windows designed by Christiansen; and of course, the Haus der Flächenkunst, an exhibition hall erected opposite the Ernst Ludwig Haus, for the temporary display of paintings, sculptures and decorative arts. All these ephemeral buildings designed by Olbrich were removed after the closure in October of the first show titled Ein Dokument deutscher Kunst. Three years passed before the Mathildenhöhe once more opened to the public to display an exhibition from 15 July to 10 October 1904. This time they tried to economize by cutting back both on temporary constructions – simply using kiosks as restaurants – and on the three terraced houses built for the occasion, none of them intended for new artists in the colony.12 Once more, Olbrich was in charge of the design, remaining true to his ornamental taste while the colony continued to receive new constructions and other art creations. But the most decorated were destroyed in World War II; hence the only consistent testimony left of this second exhibition is a monument in a public area between Sabaisplatz and the yard in front of the boulevard of plane trees, an architectural ornamental fountain designed by Olbrich, decorated with small figures of animals by Daniel Greiner and a bronze mask fountain by Ludwig Habich. Four years later, the exhibition titled Hessische Landesausstellung für freie und angewandte Kunst showcased artists and artisans from Hesse in general, not just specifically from the Mathildenhöhe art colony. Olbrich was the only founding member remaining; all others had left, substituted by some newcomers.13 At the time he was enjoying the peak moment of his architectural contribution to that urban setting, but it also marked the beginning of his departure as resident. Increasingly busy with important commissions in other cities, he soon settled in Dusseldorf and would not even return to the colony on 23 May 1908 to attend the opening of the next exhibition

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and the inauguration of new buildings, two of which were his own projects. On the one hand, the Oberhessisches Ausstellungshaus was commissioned by an association created in 1907 to display industrial and decorative arts from the north of Hesse. On the other hand, the corporation of Darmstadt ordered the construction of a panoramic tower on top of the hill and an adjacent building for exhibitions, originally called Gebäude für freie Kunst, which became Olbrich’s last masterpiece after experiencing numerous complications.14 To save costs, the municipality wanted these architectures to be simple and functional buildings in concrete, though their forecourt, Sabaisplatz, was later decorated with four expressionist allegoric figures – Wrath, Hatred, Revenge, Greed – carved on stone by sculptor Bernhard Hoetger (Figure 4.2). The neighbouring tower is also profusely ornate both inside and outside. The entrance, in particular, is decorated with allegoric reliefs by Heinrich Jobst representing Strength, Wisdom, Justice and Gentleness, to which a sundial and a clock were added in 1914, plus mosaics in the atrium and on the sundial by F. W. Kleuken. But the most monumental element is the curious shape of the 48.5-metre tall tower topped by five staggered crests. The sculpture-like quality of this tower derives from its distinctive silhouette which has been compared to some examples of late medieval architecture in Prague and Malchin; but it also perfectly fits within its surroundings: the tower of a nearby nineteenth-century Russian chapel also has a spire with five staggered toppings (Geelhaar, 2004: 43). The tower, popularly known as Fünffingerturm – five finger tower – soon became the landmark of the city, as it can be seen from many points within the adjacent area as the summit of the urban horizon. Inside, the most exclusive and luxurious rooms were reserved for the use of Great Duke Ernst Ludwig and his second wife; but Olbrich had designed other parts for public access so that anyone could enjoy the scenery: indeed, the vast panoramic views of the city and its surrounding landscape dominating from the Wedding Tower have always attracted many visitors. Originally the attached exhibition hall also boasted beautiful views, as the Austrian architect had insisted on placing windows on the sides, but these were later walled up. In many ways, Olbrich considered both the tower and the exhibition hall crowning the hill as the culmination of the Mathildenhöhe. Unfortunately, he died of leukaemia a few months after the inauguration and could not participate later when the ensemble was transformed into a museum. A local art association, the Deutsches Kunstlerbundes Darmstadt, took on the management and organized exhibitions each summer. Albin Müller, painter and self-taught architect, one of the eldest members of the art community there, was in charge of finishing the urban planning process on the hill.15 He built on the northern side of the hill a group of thirty-seven dwellings for lease distributed in eight three-storey blocks and one five-storey building for workshops – which is the only building still standing, as the houses were destroyed during World War II. He also erected a pergola and a decorative kiosk – called the Temple of Swans – along Alexandraweg. He placed a bench

Figure 4.2 Expressionist figures by Bernhard Hoetger in the forecourt of the Wedding Tower and exhibition building on the summit of the Mathildenhöhe (Photo: JPL)

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under a mosaic-adorned canopy in an adjacent alleyway and an ornamental pond in front of the Russian chapel – known as the Iris Pond – with multicoloured ceramic at the bottom, though its main ornamentation consists of the sitting statues of Saint Joseph and the Virgin with Child placed by sculptor Bernhard Hoetger on each side, as if resting by the water while fleeing to Egypt. Müller also built a monumental gateway, no longer in existence, on the Mathildenhöhe, the Löwentor or Lions Gate, so-called because of the six statues of stone lions which surround it, also the work of Hoetger. This sculptor of masonic beliefs also strove from 1911 to 1914 to decorate the Romantic boulevard of plane trees, placing two bronze statues at the entrance. The statue to the west represents a panther taking away the Spirit of the Night and to the east a silver lioness carrying the Spirit of the Day. A fountain was placed amongst the trees with three allegoric female figures representing the cycle of water, plus a group of four monuments on the cycle of light and shadow in life with multicoloured reliefs evoking Spring, Summer, Dreams and Resurrection. The iconographic agenda was rounded up with two curious statues, one of a sitting Buddha and the other of a dying mother holding her child in her arms. These statues he later used again in two similar monuments in Worpswede.16 All these architectural and sculptural additions were inaugurated on 16 May 1914, when the last exhibition of the colony opened to the public. It was due to last until 11 October but had to be closed at the beginning of August after the outbreak of the Great War. That deadliest conflict did not bring about the definitive end of the colony on the Mathildenhöhe. Not all the artists and residents left; several of them stayed on for years.17 Even more turned up during the war, contributing a fresh intellectual direction to the community.18 Meanwhile, the cultural offer to the public on top of the hill did not cease, though it was obviously influenced by developments within German society. Art exhibitions continued to be held every summer from 1917 onwards.19 Of course, the sociopolitical evolution entailed important changes in the neighbourhood. After the revolution of November 1918, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig refused to abdicate, and he was deposed by the Darmstadt Workers and Soldiers Council. Sorting out his private property from what was owned by the public treasury was no easy task. This did not affect the houses on the Mathildenhöhe bought by private citizens, though there was some confusion regarding public infrastructures because some had been paid for by the city hall.20 In the meantime, in the absence of a promoter of this artistic estate, infrastructures deteriorated, and some buildings and other elements were never rebuilt after bombing raids during World War II. Or they would get austere rehabilitations that eliminated part of its profuse original ornamentation. The municipality did attempt in various ways to resume the idea of a colony of resident artists and intellectuals;21 but as the art nouveau style – despised earlier on by the most radical enthusiasts of the Modern Movement – was regaining popularity, the preservation of the ensemble became a priority over its residential function.

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Such public investments boosted a growing desire to promote public use and access; hence several plans emerged to erect a new museum.22 Yet none came to fruition until the Ernst Ludwig Haus was rebuilt from 1984 to 1990 to house the Museum Künstlerkolonie. Thus, any tourist and visitor can access now one of Olbrich’s most celebrated constructions showcasing art, plans, photographs and information on the history of the artistic colony on the Mathildenhöhe. The Ausstellunshallen are also open to the public for temporary exhibitions as well as the Hochzeitsturm, used since 1993 to celebrate civil weddings, and it can also be visited by the public to enjoy the panoramic views. From the museion, in the etymological sense of the word, it has evolved into a proper museum, which had not been the initial goal. But museums were explicitly included as key elements of the intended strategy in other so-called artists’ colonies, deriving from a similar classical ideal of erecting cultural clusters on top of high hills in the peripheries of great cities.

4.3 Ill-fated derivations, from cultural urban crown to museum with broad views From a stylistic point of view, the urbanization of the Mathildenhöhe by Olbrich could be compared to the Park Güell designed from 1900 by Antoni Gaudí, another genius of art nouveau architecture, on Mount Carmel in Barcelona. In that case too, his promoter, Count Güell, sold allotments to some rich local friends of his, who would have their mansions built in that suburban promontory, and he also gave several lots in more generous conditions to some of his artist friends, such as Gaudí himself. Parallels end here, though, as the Darmstadt ‘art colony’ was a favourite public place to walk for local citizens and visitors, whose massive attendance was most coveted for the great summer exhibitions; while the elitist Barcelonian complex was a fenced private condominium closed to the public – until 1920 when the city council turned it into a municipal park (Freixa & Leniz, 2012). Gaudí and Güell did not even include there a chapel or church where pious outsiders would come on pilgrimage for public religious celebrations, such as the temple to which both gave a prominent place on a hill above the Colonia Güell, a proletarian district designed for the workers of Eusebi Güell in Santa Coloma de Cervelló. In the meantime, while Güell and other magnates from Barcelona wanted to move their residences to a wooded mount on the outskirts of the city in order to find a safe refuge away from the populace, other potentates were delighted to receive visitors of all conditions in their suburban dwellings. For instance, Belgian Raoul Warocqué who was so keen to display his large collection of books and artworks on an estate with the distinguished name of Mariemont, a former royal hunting reserve on the outskirts of Morlanwelz, that he patriotically bequeathed the property with all its contents to the Belgium people so that it would become a museum open to all. Perhaps it was a museum model that inspired Auguste Rodin who, in 1905, was

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commissioned to produce a version of the Burghers of Calais to be placed on a pedestal before the facade. The French sculptor had also taken up residence on a hill between Issy-lesMoulineux and Meudon, to the south-west of Paris. In 1895, after renting a cottage in the area because some of his best friends lived nearby, he bought a mansion called Villa des Brillants, surrounded by meadows, and later he went on to purchase more land in the vicinity. Here he not only intended to have his home and workshop but also an ambitious mouseion, a cultural stronghold where the arts were worshipped in syncretic communion with nature. The artist had already pondered the idea of bequeathing a museum to posterity ever since he had displayed his great retrospective exhibition in a pavilion at the Place de l’Alma, not far from the location of the Exposition Universelle of 1900.23 As Rodin had not reached an agreement with the city hall to extend that installation sine die, in 1901 he resolved to rebuild the pavilion, along with all its contents, next to his mansion in Meudon. But that ‘museum’ was to hold not only his own works but also his art treasures from different countries, epochs and artists. Some pieces of that collection of antiquities can be seen proudly displayed on pedestals under a porch of the pavilion in the famous photograph taken by Albert Harlingue, showing Rodin and his partner, Rose Beuret, in the foreground, along with Rainer Maria Rilke, who wrote an enthusiastic description both of the collection and of the adjacent library, combined as a temple of Muses in the style of the Mouseion of Alexandria. The presence of a writer such as Rilke and the existence of a large library unquestionably enhanced this sort of hill of the Muses. Upon his arrival in the summer of 1905, Rilke was accommodated in a small house all to himself from where he wrote an eloquent letter inviting his wife, Clara, who was at the time living in the art colony of Worpswede. In this period both the German writer and his wife preferred to live with other friends in an artistic Siedlung, so he enthusiastically described his living quarters overlooking the valley of the Sèvres and especially the picturesque neighbourhood in terms of architecture and people, where everyone lived surrounded by a surfeit of antiquities.24 The poet became part of Rodin’s small ‘court’ as his secretary. Rodin’s disciples and assistants were also accommodated in other buildings he had erected further down the hill. In 1906 the sculptor bought one part of the Issy-les-Moulineaux palace whose facade, including a column-adorned portico and sculpted pediment, he had rebuilt here over the next four years: its imposing silhouette complemented the ensemble of the Villa des Brillants and the museum pavilion at the top of the hill. Already within Rodin’s lifetime, this cultural acropolis was widely known through abundant souvenir postcards under the name Le Musée et la Maison du Sculpteur Rodin or similar25 (Figure 4.3). This was not a mere caprice of a nouveau rich but an ambitious cultural cité26 inhabited by some fifty disciples, assistants or employees working for Rodin and

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Figure 4.3 Rodin’s estate on a hill of Meudon (Postcard with postmark from 1917)

visited by many eminent cultural pilgrims arriving from distant places who were generously given food and shelter even for prolonged stays. Rilke did not last there long, and it was he who persuaded Rodin to become part of another ‘colony of artists’ at the Hôtel Biron in Paris, a rundown eighteenth-century mansion in the city centre where the writer rented a room in 1909. Isadora Duncan, Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse and other artists, poets and intellectuals attracted by the bohemian company and the cheap rent were amongst the many other tenants who took up residence in the building. Rodin thenceforth began to appropriate the rest of the building, and this eventually led to the creation of the Museum Rodin in Paris, that was already known as such on some postcards even before the official inauguration which took place after the artist’s death. Rodin was buried in his estate in Meudon, and with the patronage of some wealthy admirers, the French government tried to carry out his wish to preserve the ensemble, though it did not open as a museum until 1948, enduring significant damage in the meantime. What matters here, more than this legacy, is how it fit historically within the modern re-elaboration of the classical ideal of mouseion on top of suburban hills. Many other contemporary artists worldwide also emulated Rodin, beginning with sculptor Carl Milles: his residence and museum were placed on a hill in Lidingö, overlooking Stockholm, where in the roaring twenties he gradually created terraced gardens of sculptures,

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all of which he gave to Sweden in 1936. Another colleague, Icelander Einar Jónsson, offered all his artworks to the nation with the purpose of opening a museum as a cultural and political acropolis on Mount Skolavorduhaed, the highest point of Reykjavik – some years later it was also complemented with a Lutheran temple, Hallgrimskirkja, the largest and highest church in Iceland. Closer instances, on the periphery of Paris, must not be overlooked either. In 1902 sculptor Alfred Boucher inaugurated in Montparnasse – at the time a mount adorned with gardens on the outskirts of Paris – his cité d’artistes officially and rather pompously named Villa Médicis, though it would be popularly known as La Ruche because of the polygonal shape of the central building which housed the artists’ workshops. There was also a gallery for temporary exhibitions, inaugurated in 1905, a three-hundred-seat theatre and gardens with sculptures by Boucher himself and by other sculptors from the colony, along with the house where the patron himself lived until his death in 1934. This ‘artistic Parnassus’ was evidently a less refined version, closer to the rural precedent of Montmartre, as has been correctly highlighted in a specialized bibliography (Warnod, 1988). While the mills and vineyards on that northern hill, separated from the city by the dense maquis wilderness, had attracted the Intransigeants or other groups of artists and bohemians who voluntarily isolated themselves from the urban epicentre, in Montparnasse too the cafes and artworkshops so celebrated during the Belle Époque were in the vicinity of cottages, farms and woodland. The same could be said about Chiado in Lisbon, Schwabing in Munich, Damstredet in Oslo or many other ‘artists’ neighbourhoods’ on top of suburban hills towering over their respective modern capitals. The new settlers of these urban heights were not only artists but also members of the socio-cultural élite, who delighted in rubbing shoulders with painters and sculptors, just as Rilke did when he settled in Meudon next to Rodin. The German poet seems also to have been one of the key factors in connecting generous patrons with utopian urban projects. Rilke was a friend of Ludwig von Hofmann, a painter from Darmstadt, who introduced the poet in the Mathildenhöhe, thus becoming part of the clique of its promoter, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, who had some of Rilke’s books published. On the other hand, Rilke was part of the coterie of artists and poets favoured by Karl Ernst Osthaus at the Folkwang Museum of Hagen, an institution the magnate later wished to move to a suburban mountain for which he commissioned Bruno Taut. The latter was to create a cultu(r)al settlement to complete what had originally begun as Osthaus’s residence, surrounded by a colony of artists and villas for the local élite. Besides, other architects had been involved beforehand, amongst them Peter Behrens soon after leaving the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt. As in that German city, in this other case the main sponsor of the project was a generous patron of the arts, Karl Ernst Osthaus, the heir to a local family of bankers and industrialists. He no doubt knew Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, shared his belief in the arts as catalysts of local socioeconomic

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growth and admired the artistic amalgamation so beautifully planned there by architect Olbrich. Many parallels could be found, as Osthaus also aspired to a Gesamtkunstwerk, mixing all the arts and combining private residential use with public open areas. But, as we shall see, there were significant differences, starting with the curious fact that in this case the story began precisely with an ambitious mixed-use residential/cultural complex in the city centre of Hagen. By 1902 Osthaus had already founded a new museum in his hometown, offering to the public a peculiar combination of many things, all of which under the enigmatic name of Museum Folkwang, a label evocative of German mythology which he simply made up. In many ways, visiting his museum was like visiting him, as his family lived in the same building. The rooms he shared with his wife, Gertrud, and their five children were opened to the public on the occasion of concerts or other social events; thus, in 1904 he asked Peter Behrens to design a new building next door, but the Folkwang headquarters continued to be insufficient, so Henry van de Velde, the same architect who had designed the art nouveau interior was commissioned to build another house: a mansion surrounded by a garden on the outskirts of the city. Likely emulating the Mathildenhöhe, a new project was started: to build an art nouveau colony of villas on the wooded hill of the Emst district next to the old town of Eppenhausen – which had become part of Hagen in 1901. The view from this area was not particularly dramatic, as trees and vegetation covered the hill, but at least it was isolated from the toxic fumes spewed out by the factories in Hagen. This colony, or Siedlung, was conceived as a high ‘court’, or Hohenhof, by Osthaus, who saw himself there as a new Apollo surrounded by his personal ‘courtiers’: artists, celebrities, guests and household. Besides his own residence, in 1906 the tycoon turned estate developer plotted the vast land he had purchased, offering his friends the chance to move to a Villenkolonie, which would offer two types of dwellings. On the one hand, luxurious mansions could be rented or bought by wealthy elites, as Ernst Ludwig had done on the Mathildenhöhe, so it is hardly surprising that the person asked to design those houses was someone who had lived there: his protégé Peter Behrens. Yet on the other hand, he asked Josef Hofmann, August Endell, Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut to design sixteen villas for his artist friends, none of which came to fruition. Although that Kunstlerkolonie did not become reality, some artists would soon move to a row of detached or semi-detached houses for middle-class bohemian dwellers along Stirnband, a winding road in the vicinity.27 But only nine houses were built. Architect J.L. Mathieu Lauweriks based their design on the theosophical symbolism of mazes, which he evoked using recurring square geometric patterns on the decoration of the buildings and gardens of each of these houses, all of them of the same height and made of identical materials and colours: brick, stone and wood. Some of the artists who lived there, such as sculptor Milly Steger and painter Thorn Prikker, added decoration to their facades or gardens, partially visible from the street. In

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the interim the construction of this estate turned out to be too lengthy and expensive because Lauweriks introduced changes without cost control, to the point that from 1911 Ostahus hired architect Georg Metzendorf as an adviser because of his proven capacity to build cheap houses on the outskirts of Essen in the first German garden city, Margarethenhöhe, promoted by businesswoman and benefactor Margarethe Krupp. Osthaus had been one of the founders of the Deutsche GartenstadtGesellschaft (DGG), or Society for the Garden City, and already by 1905 he had organized in Hague a conference on social housing. He even contributed his own thoughts, along with other specialists, on the subject, such as Hermann Muthesius, Karl Henrici and Richard Riemerschmid (Schulte, 2009).28 The latter had even received the commission, through Osthaus, to plan on the other side of the hill in Ermst, known as Walddorf, a workers’ colony for the employees of the Elbers textile factory (Sinzel, 2002). Only six terraced houses were built between 1910 and 1912 out of the eighty-seven houses designed by Riemerschmid. But the Bavarian architect devised several plans for the Walddorf Siedlung which he was able to put into effect in the Hellerau garden city founded near Dresden by furniture industrialist and philanthropist Karl Schmidt-Hellerau around his design company for interior decoration called Deutschen Werkstätten. From this emerged Osthaus’s most ambitious project in emulation of Hellerau and Margaretenhöhe. He set out to establish the Ems ‘garden city’ around his Villa Hohenhof, giving it the name Hohenhagen. The initial core would be the terrace of middle-class houses designed by Lauweriks, who was promised full responsibility for the design, though in collaboration with another friend, architect Walter Gropius, also recommended by Behrens. Osthaus led them to believe they would build around twenty-five hundred houses distributed along wide streets; though what thrilled him most were ‘representative’ buildings. While the Festspielhaus – a multipurpose building offering theatre and music performances and including a school of music and rhythm founded in 1910 by Swiss Émile Jacques-Dalcroze – occupied a place of honour in Hellerau’s urban planning, Osthaus’s garden city was also to erect a monumental building for the Deutsche Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe – a museum with no premises he had created in 1909 to promote exhibitions of industrial arts. Other public buildings were to be constructed on the higher spots of the urban complex with sports arenas, an equestrian school and a rhythmic gymnastics centre situated on the periphery (Herta, 1971: 376). Gropius thus followed the model of the garden cities according to Ebenezer Howard’s original conception: the natural beauty of green areas should be combined, in order to attract more visitors and new settlers, with urban services and amenities. Therefore, Howard had imagined a ‘crown’ of public buildings gathered around the city centre, the heart of the ideal settlement proposed in his 1898 book, Tomorrow, A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, reedited in 1902 under the title Garden Cities of Tomorrow, with a famous illustration representing a round central plaza surrounded by

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the town hall, the hospital, a concert and conference hall, a theatre, a library and a museum or art gallery29 (Figure 4.4). Indeed, the idealization of nature was a cardinal factor in a new way of life then gaining momentum, particularly among German people, which could be described as ‘naturism’ in the modern sense of the term, as the typical activities included sunbathing and collective nudist games in the open air – practised by the Osthaus family in the gardens of Villa Hohenhof, as attested

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Figure 4.4 Drawing of the ideal garden city, structured in concentric circles around a central square, bordered by public buildings, including a museum/art gallery (Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1902)

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to by a photograph of around 1915. But the hedonism and vital optimism which originally lay behind these practices gave way to a rising disenchantment with modern urban life in the return to nature stirred by the Great War. As a result of its outbreak, Gropius and Osthaus were mobilized while Lauweriks was repatriated back to Holland. This put an end to the dream of a garden city in Hohenhaguen, replaced by another form of utopia. The new ideal was not a Rousseauian withdrawal into nature, like the model represented by Mount Verità’s Siedlung,30 which had always fascinated artists and intellectuals – including Henry van de Velde himself – as well as masons and other supporters of alternative trends of thought close to Osthaus. He had grown disenchanted with his great urban project in Hohenhagen and undertook to defend a small community in his doctoral thesis of 1918 titled Grundzüge der Stilentwicklung (Principles Style Development). He sent a copy of his dissertation to architect and urban planner Bruno Taut, who had been directly involved with the German movement of garden cities but was at the time also evolving towards other chimeras as expressed in his 1918 book, Alpine Architektur.31 They then exchanged correspondence and dreamt of putting into effect a common utopian project no longer focused on dwellings but on the Folkwang-Schule (Schulte, 1994). Osthaus had always championed social education, especially in matters of taste, and he and some of his artist friends supported the revolution of November 1918, when Villa Hohenhof became the headquarters of the Hagen Workers and Soldiers Council. At the end of the war, seriously ill and abandoned by his wife, who had left him for a younger man, he wanted to condense all his previous projects into one. He converted part of his mansion into a school-workshop of arts and crafts for war orphans and for children of middle-class families, an undertaking even more ambitious than the Bauhaus led by his friend Walter Gropius on the outskirts of Weimar. He envisioned that the Folkwang-Schule of Villa Hohenhof should be complemented by surrounding workshops, farms, houses, an astronomy observatory, a chapel, a meeting room, plus the exhibition halls and a museum with a permanent exhibition open to the public. In 1920 Bruno Taut became intensely involved in this project, and they both sought the assistance and collaboration of their acquaintances and of various public offices.32 They unanimously referred to this project as Stadtkrone, since they planned to erect buildings for collective use at the top, as an urban crown around a central square, very much like the circular plaza of the garden city drawn up by Ebenezer Howard. But in this case, in agreement with Taut’s theosophical inclinations, the highest building was to be the Haus der festlichen Andacht, a tower for festive worship/meditation to be followed in height by a museum with the most spectacular facade (Fischer & Schneede, 2010). The walls of both constructions were to have abundant openings partly decorated with stained glass windows in the case of the large worship building, while the museum was to provide views over the countryside from a low angle to avoid the effects of lateral illumination (Figure 4.5).

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Figure 4.5 Osthaus’s estate as Stadtkrone with public buildings; design by Bruno Taut

The intended contents of this museum are unclear: given the particular attention paid to the school of industrial arts, it would have been logical for Osthaus to locate there his Deutsche Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe, which would then have finally found a home, but the young students might have been interested, to complement their education, in the biological specimens from the collection of the Folkwang Museum which in his youth Osthaus had originally devised as a museum of natural history. It was even contemplated that, in due course, the entire collection of the Folkwang Museum could be transferred from the city centre in Hagen to this new museum building. In 1921 Osthaus’s untimely death put an end to these schemes. The following year his paintings and sculptures were sold by his heirs to the city of Essen as well as the designated Folkwang Museum. His collection of industrial art was later purchased by the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum of Krefeld. All that remained of the ambitious Stadtkrone that Taut had planned next to Villa Hogenhof simply resulted in the central yard, pompously named the Goldenen Pforte, or golden gate. Right next to it, paper manufacturer Emil Hoesch commissioned Henry van de Velde to build a house, though it was finally completed, with some changes, by architect Theodor Merrill in 1925. A few metres to the south, Villa Kerckhoff was built in 1922, the masterpiece of the architects Heinrich and Leopold Ludwig. These two brothers built their own residence next to the Goldene Pforte between 1937 and 1938. Hence, instead of completing the neighbourhood with buildings for collective use, the original project of private dwellings was resumed: a Villenkolonie.33 Similarly, the model of a garden city in England never materialized with the crown of public buildings envisioned by Ebenezer Howard; in fact, the arts rather had a low profile in their streets.34 However, with regard to the construction of a museum or art gallery as urban epicentre, perhaps it could be considered an exceptional case the workers colony created on the outskirts of Liverpool by William Hesketh Lever, an industrialist and art collector who

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employed around thirty architects whom he personally directed to develop the estate. At first it was just a group of little houses quaintly positioned to fit the natural shape of the terrain by the new soap factory opened by Lever in 1888, just as other philanthropic industrialists had also created new estates for their workers. But after reading Howard’s book, Lever became one of his main followers and introduced several changes in the town which by World War I had over eight hundred houses as well as a school, a hospital, a concert hall, sports facilities and a church. All this around a public yard with gardens where a large war memorial was placed in 1921, a monument he commissioned his friend and sculptor William Goscombe John to carry out. And presiding over the wide panorama dominated from there, he also erected a beautiful museum for his collection of Georgian and Victorian art which opened to the public in 1922 under the name Lady Lever Art Gallery, in memory of his deceased wife. Thus, the monumental amalgam of urbanism, public art and museum in the heart of this garden city culminated as funeral crown.35 But in no way does this constitute a Stadkrone in the ambitious original meaning of the term, doubly allusive to topographical and socio-cultural prominence. Only with reservations may be designated as such other green expansions crowned by the sociological dome of an artistic and scientific microcosm. Like the one constituted in Rome, on the occasion of the International Exhibition of 1911, the colony of Villa Giulia started to become a glamorous hive of museums and dwellings for artists and researchers, including the British School since 1916 or the Academy of Rumania five years later and followed in the 1930s by the Dutch Academy, the Austrian Institute of Culture and the Academy of Belgium.36 A fascinating instance also came about in Spain at Altos del Hipódromo de la Castellana in Madrid, headquarters of the National Museum of Natural Sciences since 1910, sharing with the School of Industrial Engineers the magnificent Palace of Arts and Industry which from 1887 to 1889 had hosted the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts. This cultural acropolis was called Colina de los Chopos (Poplar Hill), a name suggested by poet Juan Ramón Jiménez and adopted specially to designate the Residencia de Estudiantes, a college hall founded by the followers of German Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. Between 1915 and 1936, this institution accommodated, amongst others, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca and Severo Ochoa, but the Spanish Civil War put an end to that brilliant nest of artists and intellectuals. The nineteenth-century ideal of an artistic Parnassus as a social and urban crown gradually faded as the twentieth century advanced and made way to other utopian projects where museums – in the modern term of the word – had to play an increasingly leading role, at times complemented by libraries or other public institutions. Although John Ruskin had settled a prominent precedent in 1878 by opening his own museum at Walkley, up a steep hill three miles outside Sheffield (assuming that its audience would perceive it as the climb to knowledge and beauty: Koven, 1994: 26, 46, footnote 7), the

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most influential protagonists of this tendency would then be Scotsman Patrick Geddes and Belgian Paul Otlet. These two activists first tried to recreate a ‘cultural agora’ presiding over Edinburgh and Brussels, respectively, and eventually envisaged museum complexes in green peripheral estates, with no houses for artists. Geddes’s main undertaking was initially to transform Castlehill, in the heart of Edinburgh, into a hill of the Muses. In 1892 he purchased an abandoned tower which he then turned into his centre of operations, renaming it Outlook Tower. From the top of the tower, visitors could enjoy panoramic views of the city and its surroundings, while on the lower floors a series of devices and educational implements from all over the world could be admired. This was to be complemented in the neighbourhood by many other projects that were never completed, such as a library, statues of prominent figures, a gallery of sculptures and a workshops for artists. When in 1903 Andrew Carnegie donated to Dunfermline, his hometown, a generous sum of money, along with an estate historically known as Malcolm’s Tower and later to be called Pittencrieff Park, Geddes suggested erecting a palace there for a historical museum, surrounded by other leisure amenities, such as a zoo, a sports centre and a gymnasium, all of which never got any farther than the planning stage (Meller, 1993; Vidler, 2003; Welter, 2003). His Belgian friend had been involved from his youth in the project of Mont des Arts in Brussels, an idea initially promoted by king Leopold II, who had purchased the entire area of Saint Roches with the intention of building the royal library, archives, museums and other institutions there. To that effect the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Public Instruction created a commission in 1906 whose youngest member was Otlet, who acted as secretary. He proved to be such a keen member of the commission that he managed to receive the approval of its members for the creation, amongst other infrastructures, of a Social Museum and a Museum of the World, or Mundameum. He aspired to locate in the latter the Union of International Associations founded in 1907; but once the old buildings had been demolished, funds ran out. He later was to inspire the megalomaniac project of sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen and architect Ernest Hébrard, who in 1913 published under the title Création d’un Centre mondial de communication their ideal of a new capital arranged around three squares. An Olympic centre was to be built near the port, and its entrance would be flanked by two colossal statues of a man and a woman holding hands. At the other urban end, a scientific forum was to be presided over by the Tower of Progress; in the middle of the city, a square would be bordered by cultural institutions: a Temple of the Arts, a School of Fine Arts, a Conservatory, a Museum of Natural History and a Zoological Garden.37 Bringing this project to fruition was unthinkable; though in some large cities, modern expansions were crowned by some kind of cultural acropolis, accomplishing in a smaller scale the idea of a square bordered by cultural institutions from the megaproject envisaged by Andersen and Hébrard or

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the forum devised by Geddes and Otlet. A beautiful example is the enlargement of Gothenburg along a central boulevard majestically rising from the port to the Götaplatsen Hill, developed on the occasion of a large exhibition in 1923. It consists of a square presided over by the statue of Poseidon, the work of Carl Milles, bordered by the Museum of Art, the city library and the theatre. In the meantime, both Geddes and Otlet continued to be very involved in the utopia of the Mudaneum. Otlet also collaborated from 1926 with Le Corbusier in a common attempt to build it on the outskirts of Geneva when this Swiss city became the headquarters of the United Nations (Le Corbusier & Otlet, 1928). In terms of aesthetics, that cultural ideal then reached a diversion: the classical tradition in architecture versus modernism. The beaux-arts style of the megaproject by Andersen and Hébrard was continued by the imposing form of a classical temple used in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, built between 1919 and 1928 on Fairmount – the hill storing the city’s water tanks in the nineteenth century – and nearby the Rodin Museum was inaugurated in 1929, along with many other art and cultural attractions. However, for even more stunning panoramic views, one must visit Barcelona and climb up to Montjüic, whose name perhaps originates from the medieval Jewish cemetery on the slopes of this mountain which was transformed, on the occasion of the International Exhibition of 1929, into an attractive urban area where nature, monumental buildings, public art and museums make a beautiful combination. Practically the entire city may be viewed from the National Art Museum of Catalonia; this is the one thing that is unanimously praised about the building, whose palace-like design seems a late product of nineteenth-century historicism. A very different trend would be followed by the defenders of the Modern Movement not only in terms of architecture, as they favoured placing their buildings on top of hills as well as at a distance from the city so that their striking architecture could dominate the horizon from the height of the mount, surrounded by nature. An eloquent instance was the project by Frank Lloyd Wright called Automobile Objective to stand at the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain in Maryland. The wealthy businessman Gordon Strong had suggested the idea to him in 1924 to act as an attraction for tourists making excursions by automobile, especially from Washington, DC, and Baltimore. The tycoon’s initial idea was to provide a large ballroom in the middle, but Wright replaced it with a theatre, an observatory and planetarium, plus an aquarium and a small museum of natural history, all of which could be accessed through coiled ramps winding around the hill. The plan never materialized, though; it is often referred to in architecture handbooks as the source of the celebrated spiral conic design the architect was later to use in an inverted form at the Guggenheim Museum of New York. But is relevant here inasmuch as the renowned author of modern ‘prairie houses’ may have served as the inspiration for the final designs of the Mundaneum. The project continued to be conceived as an ambitious cultural amalgam: a stadium,

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a library, a cinema, a university, buildings for associations and yards adorned with monumental sculptures and trees were also planned, though it seems that people and their homes were preferably placed farther away. Everything looks cosily surrounded by the mountain wilderness in some of the drawings kept by the Foundation Le Corbusier (ref. 32114), though curiously enough none of them depicts the views of or from the city which was to stand at the foot of the hill. Some of these drawings have been widely disseminated by architecture scholars, as they constitute an extraordinary testimony to the genesis of Le Corbusier’s passion for building a square spiral pyramid, inspired by Mesopotamian ziggurats, which he tried to use during his career in other projects for museums and cultural institutions (O’Byrne, 2004). The central role played by the terraced spiral would later mark the ever-expanding museum envisaged by Le Corbusier in 1939 to crown a mount near Philippeville (today Skikda, in Algeria), another project unfulfilled, which has inspired photographer Dionisio González and one of the most poetic images of his series ‘Le Corbusier: The Last Project’ (Figure 4.6). Up to the end of his life, the Swiss architect pursued this dream, combining the return to the architecture of antiquity with the idea of a mouseion on the pastoral peripheries of metropolitan areas, preferably on a natural promontory or an artificial elevation, as in the case of his never fulfilled project for the Museum of Living Artists in the banlieue of Paris (O’Byrne, 2005).

Figure 4.6 Dionisio González: Musée à croissance illimitée (Le Corbusier), 2013 (Photo kindly provided by the artist)

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Closely linked to this precedent was the failed project in the shape of an inverted pyramid designed in 1955 by his disciple Oscar Niemeyer for a modern art museum in Caracas, on top of Bello Monte, an urban hill used as a university campus. More modestly, a utopian settlement materialized in Colombia in 1966 when the district Minuto de Dios was created in the north-western suburbs of Bogotá: at the centre stood a church, theatre, university and the Museum of Contemporary Art, whose collection of modern sculptures extends now throughout the surrounding gardens and the square. The building, though, continues to be the centre of attention, as its architecture emulates, in reverse, the coiled structure devised by Frank Lloyd Wright for New York’s Guggenheim. Another imitation of ziggurats and labyrinths was built in the French countryside by Josep Lluis Sert on top of a wooded area in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (Figure 4.7), originally intended as a sort of Mount Parnassus where the artist friends of gallery owner Aimé Maeght would live and work around a square housing a collection and a small exhibition area, with a chapel at the summit. The project ended up as a celebrated museum which opened to the public in 1964. This precedent inspired the buildings which Sert himself designed for his friend Joan Miró on a hill in Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona, respectively, both eventually opened to the public as museums by the private foundations

Figure 4.7 Aerial view of the Maeght Foundation, with the houses of Saint-Paul de Vence in the background (Postcard ca. 1965)

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in charge of them. For his part, Alvar Aalto very appropriately revived the idea of the ziggurat for the Persian city of Shiraz, where in 1970 he planned a project, never realized, to build a museum of modern art on top of the suburban hill that dominates the new university campus. And many others followed suit, as the postmodern gaze would also rediscover the charm of civilized mountains, such as Mount Abteilberg dominating the German city of Mönchengladbach, whose new municipal museum was built by Hans Hollein on its top, or Richard Meier’s building for the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, on a hill in the Brentwood district with spectacular views over the entire metropolitan conurbation. All in all, during the twentieth century the myth of a suburban cultural crown survived, although enshrining museums open to visitors instead of dwellings for artists and intellectuals or other selected few. Besides, this utopic ideal came increasingly blended with the literary topos of the ‘retreat into nature’, not necessarily in a high point but amenably surrounded by vegetation and sculpture parks, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Notes 1 On the symbolism of mountains in ancient religions, see the famous initial pages of The Myth of the Eternal Return (Eliade, 2012). This topic reappears in a more recent bestseller on cultural landscape and anthropology by a renowned professor of art history, paying particular attention to utopian projects by megalomaniac architects and sculptors, like the plan presented by Dinocrates to Alexander the Great for Mount Athos (Schama, 1995: 100–134). 2 The term museum would gradually be less used with its etymological meaning – a temple or dwelling of the Muses – to convey instead a tuition complex housing a collection and fitted with a library: both an education centre and a sacred temple, dedicated to the highest civic endeavours (Findlen, 1989; Pohl, 2003). 3 In the classical tradition, Mount Parnassus would represent the ideal homeland of poets and, by extension, of artists and scholars. Rafael’s famous fresco in the Vatican represents a rocky hill with fountains and trees; but roofless living on top of a hill would be too rough, thus other painters imagined a palatial residence on the peak of Parnassus, as can be seen in a picture by Alessandro Allori kept at the Uffizi (reproduced in Fabianski, 1990: 113, figure 19). 4 Monte Verità is the poetic name given to a mountain near Ascona (Switzerland) by a young Dutch, Henry Oedenkoven, and his partner, Ida Hofmann, who founded with some friends in 1900 an influential nudist and vegetarian commune, where writers Thomas Mann and Mircea Eliade would spent some time. It became the Mecca for many supporters of an unconventional lifestyle, particularly fascinating to German speakers (Szeemann, 1978). 5 In fact, we know Olbrich’s words only indirectly through a report written by his colleague Hermann Bahr, a writer and art critic (Bahr, 1900: 45–46). The English translation would be: ‘The government should give us a field, in Hietzing or in the Hohe Warte and there we shall create a world. It is nothing to build a single house. How can it be beautiful if an ugly one stands next? What good are three, five, even ten houses if the street arrangement is not beautiful? What good is a beautiful street with beautiful houses if the armchairs inside are not beautiful? No – a field; nothing less will be enough. A broad, empty field; and then we shall show all we can do. From the overall design down to the last detail, all ruled

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by the same taste, the streets and the gardens and the palaces and the cottages and the tables and the armchairs and the lamps and the spoons. All emanating from the same sensibility, and in the middle, like a temple in a sacred groove, a house of labour, both artists’ studio and craftsman’s workshop, where the artist will always have the comforting and ordering crafts, and the craftsman the liberating and purifying arts about him, until the two finally merge into a single person’. After the Franco-Prussian War and the consequent loss of Alsace and Lorraine, many French people resented Germans. Rupert Carabin took into consideration not only his own patriotic feelings but also those of the social establishment he worked for. He eventually became the director of the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. Perhaps one of his merits in reaching this position was the fact he had rejected the offer put forward by the Grand Duke of Hesse. None of them ever received the twelve thousand annual marks the grand duke had allegedly offered Rupert Carabin (this was the figure the French artist claimed to have rejected). Olbrich was the best paid of all, earning four thousand marks per year, followed by Behrens and Christiansen with three thousand marks each; Habich earned eighteen hundred marks, and Bosselt twelve hundred marks per year; while Bürck and Huber received only nine hundred marks each (Kimmel, 1988: 13–14). Christiansen was originally expected to act as leading mentor of the new ‘art colony’ in Darmstadt, but he never fully broke ties with Paris and used to spend his winters there until he finally moved back to the French capital in 1902. The notion of the artist as a being above the community is linked to Nietzsche’s Übermench and to the concept Richard Wagner had of himself. The composer is usually referred to as having had an influence on Olbrich because of their common longing to amalgamate all arts: Gesamtkunstwerk; but it seems that the Viennese architect read the parable of the artist as a priest and a performer of Beauty for mankind, in a text written in 1898 by Hermann Bahr, which provided him with the abstruse motto for the entrance, which could be translated as: ‘Let the artist show his world, which never was, nor ever will be’ (Bätschmann, 1997: 160). References to rumours spreading around Darmstadt on Ernst Ludwig’s sexual adventures with both men and women on the Mathildenhöhe may be found on the Internet, but none of this is mentioned in written bibliography. It is not explained either why Paul Bürck, Hans Christiansen and Patriz Huber abandoned the art colony by 1902, followed by Peter Behrens and Rudolf Bosselt in 1903. Habich was highly successful amongst German audiences with his open air statues, some of which still adorn the parks and streets of Darmstadt, his hometown, including the Mathildenhöhe hill. In 1905 in its main street, Mathildenhöheweg, he erected the monument to Gottfried Schwab, a poet and playwright born in Darmstadt, who had died in 1903. It is not usually reproduced or reported in the existing bibliography on the art colony, but it is a favourite spot for tourist photographs. Only Olbrich and Habich remained of the original colony, but three new members arrived in 1903: twenty-three-year-old jeweller Paul Haustein, thirty-year-old painter and illustrator Johann Vincenz Cissarz and his colleague Daniel Greiner, aged thirty-one, who had abandoned his religious vocation to become an artist and achieved a prominent position as a sculptor and etcher – though he eventually also abandoned art after succeeding as a communist politician. The newly arrived were involved in the design of these houses, intended for middle-class families. Two of these dwellings were sold, while the GraueHaus – Grey House – was destined for the court chaplain, hence its original name, Predigerhaus – Preacher’s house. Paul Haustein had left in 1905, and Johann Vincenz Cissarz, Daniel Greiner and Ludwig Habich left the colony in 1906. That year architect Albin Müller,

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Modern arcadias jeweller Ernst Riegel, ceramist Jakob Julius Scharvogel and glass sculptor Josef Emil Scheckendorf arrived in the colony. They were joined in 1907 by sculptor Heinrich Jobst and illustrator and printer Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens. Some technical difficulties occurred as the water tanks were located there, and they needed to be covered using skilful engineering. There were also legal impediments, as the municipality could not give the commission to construct buildings to any architect other than the municipality’s official architect, August Buxbaum, who was not willing to relinquish his rights and produced the plans of another panoramic tower. After a heated discussion and subsequent voting, the council chose Olbrich’s project provided he was not paid as the author but was involved in the project as the grand duke’s adviser. Albin Müller, Jakob Julius Scharvogel, Heirich Jobst and Friedrich Heinrich Kleukens were the most senior. They had been joined in 1911 by sculptor Bernhart Hoetger, architect Edmund Körner and painter and illustrator Hanns Pellar as well as interior decorator Emanuel Josef Margold. Painter Fritz Osswaldm, jeweller Theodor Wende and printer Christian Heirich Kleukens arrived in 1913. His cryptic symbolism is hard to puzzle out, as Hoetger used to synthesize different ideologies, religions and cultures worldwide. When he went to Worpswede in 1914 and bought a house in the famous artistic colony, he also adorned parks and plazas with statutes: not only the statues of the sitting Buddha and the dying mother with children, in memory of painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, but also with other works on the cycle of light and shadow, where the panther and the allegoric figures he had produced for the Mathildenhöhe recur (Beil & Gutbrod, 2013). Albin Müller, Bernhard Hoetger and Jacob Julius Scharvogel left in 1914. Edmund Körner left in 1916. The colony was abandoned by Heinrich Jobst and the two Kleukens brothers in 1918. In 1921 Firtz Osswald and Theodor Wende left. But Hanns Pellar remained until 1925, and Emanuel Josef Margold did not leave until 1929. The Grey House had been built for the court chaplain, but Ernst Ludwig sold it in 1918 to pacifist philosopher Hermann Graf Keyserling, a German immigrant from the Baltic who had almost everything he owned expropriated by the Bolshevik revolution and who reached Darmstadt with but a meagre part of his wealth. In November 1920 he opened the Schule der Weisheit, a ‘school of wisdom’ whose main activity was private classes for relaxation, concentration and meditation. It also had considerable public influence through organizing annual meetings of contemporary leaders of science, politics and finance or intensive seminars with individual personalities – for instance, one week with Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. He turned the Mathildenhöhe into one of the most prestigious cultural spots in the Weimar Republic; alas, Keyserling was critical of the Nazis, and this institution and its activities soon withered under the new political scenario. After Hitler’s rise to power, he only met with obstacles to holding his meetings and publishing his works. His house was destroyed during World War II, and he decided to make a fresh start in Innsbruck, though he died before his new school of wisdom was inaugurated there. The most renowned show took place in 1920, dedicated to German expressionism. Exhibitions in the 1930s were much more committed to historical art, though not ignoring contemporary art as long as it did not clash with Nazi ideals and taste. After World War II, the exhibitions programme continued, starting from the summer of 1948. The shows of 1951 and 1976 commemorating the fiftieth and seventy-fifth anniversaries of the opening of the Mathildenhöhe were particularly noteworthy. An agreement was reached the following year whereby he was acknowledged the rightful owner of the mansions and lands outside of Hesse, while his estate within the territory was reclaimed as the property of the new State. One part of

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the old ducal park, the Rosenhöhe, with the cottage and grave of Ernst Ludwig’s only daughter from his first marriage, was set aside for the private use of his family. The Löwentor was placed at the entrance in 1926, and the duke and his second wife and children were buried there. Although still interested in the colony on the Mathildenhöhe and in art in general, the deposed grand duke spent his last years busy with litigations. When his estate was confiscated, he had been promised a compensation of ten million marks, though he was advanced only one part of this amount. Rampant inflation caused terms and agreements to be revised in 1930 and 1934. Ernst Ludwig died in October 1937. One month later, his second wife and children died in a plane crash. In 1951 Darmstadt city hall offered the lower floor of the Ernst Ludwig Haus to architect Otto Bartning. He made significant remodelling work on the left wing of the house at his own expense. From 1965 to 1967, the corporation erected seven workshops and dwellings in adjoining Rosenhöhe. The purpose was to create a new art colony which incorporated writer Heinrich Schirmbeck, poet Karl Krolow, art historian Hans Maria Wringler and sculptor Wilhelm Loth, amongst others. In 1963 a project was commissioned to build a museum to the east of the exhibition buildings, on top of the hill. But ideas about its collection and management were unclear, and the project came to nothing (Geelhaar, 2004: 165, 283). After 2006 the corporation planned to erect an art museum on the site formerly occupied by the Christiansen house. Its contents were to be the donated Sander collection of paintings and art objects from the eighteenth to the twentieth century (including some works by Christiansen and also by Eugen Bracht, who had lived in the Christiansen house for three years). In 2010, given the lack of social and political consensus, the project was halted. The display of Rodin’s works remained open months after the Universal Exhibition had ended, and both the sculptor and his admirers would have liked to see it become a permanent museum (Le Normand-Romain, 2001). It somehow constituted the origin of the future Musée Rodin, and many already used that name then; it is even identified in some postcards published at the time under the name Musée Rodin. Some old columns and capitals still remain in the open air in the gardens of Villa des Brillants, though Rodin also adorned the surroundings with ancient sculptures and proudly posed next to some of them in an eloquent photograph (Picard, 2014: 80). It was not only popularly known as a museum during Rodin’s lifetime but also actually worked as one, as it was visited by numerous personalities and people interested in paying tribute to him and admiring his collections, even when he was not there (Le Normand-Romain & Marraud, 1996). In semantic contrast to the broad concept of ville, the French term cité usually refers to a constrained urban space – for example, the nucleus of the downtown, or an art settlement or a working-class suburb. Besides Lauweriks himself, these houses were destined for the musician Heinz Schüngelen and the Haarman family, professor Heinrich Dahlhoff, sculptor Milly Steger, contractor Josef Bockskopf, municipal architect Heirinch Schäfer, Folkwang Museum worker Agnes Grave and her two sisters, writer and professor Ernst Lorenzen and painter Thorn Prikker, who lived there from 1910 to 1920. Other bohemian members of cultural life in Hagen moved there after the war (Henderson, 1998; Sinzel, 2003: 65, 67–69). It must be noted here the defence of pergolas, terraces, pavilions and fountains made by Herman Muthesius in 1907 in his book Landhaus und Garten. Howard’s design was hardly original; even he admitted being inspired by James Silk Buckingham, who had envisaged the ideal city, Victoria, with a limited

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number of inhabitants and arranged around a central plaza from which radial avenues led to peripheral factories. Similarly, a round square with four classical temples dedicated to colleges of arts and sciences, with classrooms, laboratories and specimens, would constitute the centre of the utopian Queen Victoria Town which the essayist Robert Pemberton had proposed to found in New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century. A closer precedent could have been a book published in 1896 by the German Theodor Fritsch, Die Stadt der Zukunft, also fantasizing about a circular ‘City of the Future’ surrounded by a green belt and factories. Visitors temporarily staying in Monte Verità – including many artists – were gladly welcomed as guests to join in sunbathing and working the land. After the founders left at the end of World War I, the management of Mount Verità was taken over in 1923 by artists Werner Ackermann, Max Bethke and Hugo Wilkens who ran it as a successful relaxing holiday resort. A modern hotel was built in 1926 when the land was bought by banker Eduard von der Heydt. After his death in 1964, the estate remained the property of Canton Ticino and has been used ever since for tourists and cultural events: conferences, exhibitions and a museum inaugurated in 1981. In 1919 Folkwang published this book, despite having been originally rejected by the marketing director. Two more of his books were later published as Osthaus increasingly sympathized with Taut and his visionary ideals (Stamm, 1994; García Roig, 1999). In order to publicize it and request support or donations, Osthaus published Taut’s plans and explained the project in a famous paper, which was to be his last, published in 1920 in the fourth issue of the Munich journal Genius. Zeitschrift für wefende und alte Kunst. Recent studies reproduce its entire contents (Stamm, 2002: 261–263). In the meantime, Osthaus’s mansion, Villa Hohenhof, was given over to different uses, from a sanatorium to education institutions, until it was restored in the 1980s and became a branch of the Hagen Osthaus Museum open to the public at established times. Ebenezer Howard put his plans into practice near London in 1904, founding Letchworth, and from 1907 onwards in Hampstead Garden Suburb and others. But neither museums nor artists played any central role in these urban foundations. The streets and houses of most garden cities were full of ‘picturesque’ details, but they rarely had picture galleries or artworks on public show. Port Sunlight War Memorial and Lady Lever Art Gallery could also be said to be the icing on the cake – a metaphor which also alludes to their whiteness and slightly outmoded Beaux-Arts sweet appearance. But the working-class identity of Port Sunlight remained unchallenged then and after the death of Lord Levelhulme in 1925. Until the 1980s only the workers of the nearby factory – already incorporated into the multinational corporation Unilever – continued to live there (Hubbard & Shippobottom, 1988). Some years later in this area, the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies, the Academy of Egypt and the Academy of Denmark were also erected (Chaves, 2016: 187). It was not until 1920 that the Palais Mondial was erected in another suburban museum district in Brussels, the Parc du Cinquantenaire, while the royal museums, library and conference hall would be built after World War II on Mont des Arts or Kunstberg (on this succession of utopian projects conducted in collaboration, see Gresleri & Matteoni, 1982).

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The outdoor expansion of modern museums setting artworks in nearby green areas is deeply rooted in classical antiquity and in the very etymology of the term museum. The eponymous hill, in the surrounding of Athens, was a sacred grove where the supposed abode of the Muses was delimited by gardens adorned with fountains and statues (Ruggieri & Vacirca, 1998: 130). An idyllic combination of art and nature, just like Mount Elysium or Plato’s Academy, consecrating an ideal which would persist for centuries in our collective imagination. Even in the city of Rome, some patrician homes featured patios and gardens adorned with monumental busts and figures, a custom even more widespread in rich suburban villas and much praised by Pliny the Elder. In the Renaissance, faithful to such ancient artistic dream, many potentates not only adorned their suburban mansions with sculpture gardens but also regularly hosted artists and writers there and opened the premises sometimes to their fellow citizens.1 For instance, in the Florentine Giardino di San Marco, Lorenzo the Magnificent allowed artists of his Accademia Medicea to copy his collections of antiquities. On the outskirts of Rome, the Cortile del Belvedere in the Vatican hill was designed by Bramante to display the famous Torso of Apollo, the Laocoon and other pieces from Julius II’s collection: it was the origin of all papal museums and still today remains the starting point of the Vatican tour for visitors. Due to conservation problems, very few originals are now displayed in the open air either in the Vatican or in other Renaissance sculpture gardens; only some exceptions, such as Casa de Pilatos in Seville, allow us to experience how sculpture collections may have been displayed in gardens, loggias and along walls as complements to the galleries of paintings to be found indoors. The old domestic introspective layout, typical of Mediterranean homes, would also determine the exhibition arrangement of the first public museums in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, little inclined to expand outside, even though their foundations were linked to the inauguration of public parks, as was the case of the Prado Museum. Only exceptionally did sculptures leave the museum enclosure ‘on loan’ to be placed in streets, squares and outdoor gardens where public authorities took over their management as monuments and were more interested in their iconic meaning than in identifying their

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creator or style, rarely elucidated on the pedestals. This was the case in the gardens by the Louvre ever since the French Republic opened the palace as a museum; very similar were the curatorial practices in the Tuileries, especially when they were managed by the same authorities who were in charge of the museum.2 The later expansion of cities over peripheral zones was trimmed with monuments and urban embellishments, such as the South Kensington museum complex in London containing the first British gallery of contemporary art, though artworks never made it outdoors to the nearby lawn. At the turn of the century, the newest artists’ quarters in Paris, London, Munich or other large cultural metropolises moved to peripheral districts, increasingly dissolving the art ecosystem of historical city centres. This centrifugal inertia grew even stronger to become an expanding force with the Modern Movement. Thus, in this chapter the key words are not only districts and landmarks but also edges, a third concept taken as well from the theory of the city by Kevin Lynch: boundaries increasingly subjected to the distinction of different social spaces. Green areas can be interpreted in Lynchean terms as symbolic battlegrounds between urban and rural forces. Strategic pawns in this global war game, many modern museums, serving as bridgeheads for urban expansion into natural surroundings, would be located in suburban parks or in remote rural estates. The brand-new building structures were enhanced by the surrounding heaths and woods; nonetheless, sculptures were often placed around them to act as landmarks of expanded modernity. This colonizing tendency culminated with land art, a trend popular from the 1960s onwards as the favourite form of expression of some deserters from the ‘art establishment’, which they identified with museums and art galleries in large cities; therefore, far removed from all that ought to be directed their most daring steps.

5.1 Gardens as extensions of museums in Rodin’s period and his legacy The Jardin du Luxembourg, an old royal estate around the historical palace of Marie de Medici, acquired a well-deserved artistic glamour in the nineteenth century not only because of its proximity to the School of Fine Arts, the Quartier Latin and the Pantheon but also mainly because of the relevance of the museum of the same name, officially called Musée des Artistes Vivants. Ever since it opened in 1818, its collections were displayed inside the old royal palace, which was also where the French Senate met. The remarkable collection of statues which were gradually set out around the park constituted a further tourist attraction. Initially they were not linked to the museum of contemporary art, as they mostly were old sculptures inherited from the Ancien Régime or confiscated from other mansions by the Republic. Some historical copies of ancient statues were already in such poor condition that under the reign of Louis Philippe they had to be replaced by twenty new monumental figures ranging between 2.3 metres and 3.8 metres high. Idealized

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portraits of queens, saints and other historical French women – all of them redolent of classical styles because of their poised stance and the material, white marble, chosen for this Romantic iconography – were commissioned to different sculptors: Bonnassieux, Brian, Caillouette, Debay, Demesmay, Dumont, Elshoecht, Feuchère, Gatteaux, Husson, Huguenin, Klagmann, Lescorné, Maindron, Mercier, Oudiné, Préault, Ramus, Rude and Thérasse.3 The Third Republic concluded this ornamental programme with a group of classicizing monuments promoted by the Senate or other authorities. In this aesthetic environment, The Age of Bronze by Rodin fit in very well. The first monumental sculpture commissioned to him by the State was nothing but a beautiful male nude in a Praxitelian contrapposto despite all the controversy initially stirred because of its suspicious realism.4 Most significantly, this piece belonged to the collection of the Musée des Artistes Vivants, which was thus projecting itself beyond its walls, complementing other sculptures added outdoors after great administrative and architectural changes jointly carried out by different authorities when the institution was moved to a new venue, always in the Luxembourg Park.5 When the new museum site was inaugurated in 1886, a few weatherproof artworks from the collection were placed outdoors on the terrasse des sculptures added on the western facade. Their classical appearance matched both the monuments in the park and the decoration of the building – embellished with the busts of famous artists and colossal allegories. Perhaps in an attempt to set apart those stone statues on the facades, these figures from the museum collection placed outdoors were bronzes standing on pedestals detached from the wall; they were also separated from the gardens by a balustrade bordering the museum. When most of the stone railing disappeared, the sculptures continued marking the advancing boundaries between the Luxembourg Garden and the homonymous museum. The extension inaugurated in 1897 to house part of the Caillebotte legacy does not appear to have involved major changes outside the museum, though this ‘temporary enlargement’ was erected precisely on the sculpture terrace (Bastoen, 2015: 290–292, 542–543). The museum director, Léonce Bénédite, simply solved the situation by gaining grounds from the park and placing the exact same bronze statues, or very similar ones, farther forward, lined up over the green lawn.6 The graceful nudes seemed to beckon pedestrians walking on the path between the park and Rue de Vaugirard. They are faithfully portrayed in numerous postcards dedicated to this renowned park at the turn of the century, some containing the poetic notice ‘Jardin du Luxembourg artistique: Allée des Statues’, while others simply read, ‘París. Jardin du Luxembourg. Le Musée’, which was quite revealing of the fact that it was publicly assumed that the realms of the museum extended over that part of the garden (Figure 5.1). A more detailed postcard published by Editions Yvon features just one of those sculptures, placed on the outdoor terrace of the museum, with a label on the pedestal: this proves that open air collections were treated here as any of the other pieces in the museum. In fact, the bronzes on this terrace were

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Figure 5.1 Western facade of the Musée du Luxembourg (Postcard datable from 1897 to 1919)

included in the museum catalogues and were replaced through the years, unlike other perimuseal sets of sculptures, such as the modern bronzes in the colonnade terrace in front of Nationalgelerie of Berlin or the sculptures from the collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno of Madrid on permanent display in the surrounding gardens.7 We might wonder whether the same applied to the large variety of statues gathered on both sides of the pompous northern flank of the Musée des Artistes Vivants, attested to by other postcards from the turn of the century taken from the gate of the park in the Rue de Vaugirard. In those images it is not always easy to distinguish between the sculptures commissioned to decorate the steps at the entrance of the building from other pieces from the collection flanking them and placed in the parterres; yet those photographs document a practice which so far I have not found attested to in written sources, as they demonstrate that in the wooded area next to the eastern side of the museum a sort of deposit of sculptures gradually developed in the early twentieth century for those pieces which could not be accommodated inside (Figure 5.2). It should be noted that not all statues stood exposed to the elements outdoors, as a shelter did exist behind. Outside this shelter, none other than the first human-size bronze model of Bartholdi’s Liberty enlightening the World can be identified. Featuring in this ‘external storage’ next to the museum does not appear therefore to signify any form of affront, as even the most celebrated contemporary French sculptors were part of it. But

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Figure 5.2 Entrance to the Musée du Luxembourg with a display of sculptures outdoors (Postcard dated 1907)

Rodin’s artworks were not placed there. Quite the opposite in fact as, in an attempt to please the celebrated sculptor, Léonce Bénédite had had The Age of Bronze removed from the park. This artwork was displayed from 1901 inside the museum, and no other piece by Rodin seems to have been placed outdoors during the artist’s lifetime, though the Luxembourg Museum collected up to forty-five works by Rodin, some of them of monumental proportions, such as the colossal marble The Kiss, which stood at a prime spot indoors (it can be seen in many postcards of the gallery displays inside). But there is no evidence that the artist had expressed any disagreement regarding having his sculptures set outdoors. On the contrary, he had even suggested Edmond Turquet – who, acting as deputy secretary of state for fine arts, had commissioned him The Gates of Hell – to place his colossal Adan in front of the entrance to the future Museum of Decorative Arts. As is well known, that museum did not materialize, nor did Rodin ever finish those doors: the sculptor might have felt within himself that gates adorned with reliefs had had their moment in medieval Italy, while monumental statues flanking the entrance were more appropriate for French modern art. In fact, when he organized the retrospective exhibition of his artworks in Paris in 1900 in a pavilion at Place de l’Alma, not far from the venue of the Universal Exhibition, he placed the most controversial figure from The Burghers of Calais,

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the gesticulating Pierre de Wissant, on a plinth in the middle of the circular tholos which acted as the entrance portico. It can be seen in some postcards from the time, published with the title ‘Musée Rodin’, as both the sculptor and his admirers would have liked to have seen the pavilion turned into a permanent museum. Its classical columns framed the white plaster headless and handless silhouette raised above pedestrians as a provocative invitation. The following year Rodin resolved to have the pavilion and all its contents rebuilt next to his mansion in Meudon, minus the circular porch with the unsettling expressionist figure of Pierre de Wissant; maybe because in its new location it would no longer perform an advertising role given that the pavilion was situated on a solitary hill crowned by the Villa des Brillants instead of in a busy Parisian junction. But he did place under a porch of his ‘museum’ some selected works from his collection of antiquities, with others spread around the rest of the estate. Set against the green garden and the sky, he had often had photographs taken of his favourite artworks, amongst them The Thinker, a large bronze version of which was erected in 1906 in front of the Pantheon of Paris after raising public funds. The monument was explained by the authorities of the Third Republic as a tribute to work and to the force of the citizen, considered the political basis of society. The artist, however, viewed it eminently as a self-reference, an alter ego of himself (in fact, another monumental version of this piece would eventually preside over his grave in the gardens of his estate in Meudon). In the wake of such precedents, when Rodin settled at the Hôtel Biron in Paris in 1909, he had some of his own artworks and some pieces from his collection of classical art installed in different rooms of the palace as the other residents were evicted in the autumn of 1911 by its new owner, the State. But Rodin was allowed to remain as his lease was repeatedly extended mainly because the sculptor had already offered to bequeath his assets to the nation so that a Rodin museum could be created. Negotiations, however, did not come to a conclusion until 1916, and in the meantime he was put under pressure as partial demolition work was undertaken. In this sort of drawnout chess game he engaged in with the State, the artist used those statues as pawns he would set around perhaps to hinder demolition work or at least to make his art treasures more visible within the public sphere. He placed antiquities as well as some of his own artworks in the gardens and had them constantly photographed so that they could be seen not only by those passing by, as several highly circulated postcards attest to. They already bear the caption ‘Musée Rodin’, though many of these images may likely correspond to a time when the sculptor was still managing his collection personally and used this museum name as an asset in his negotiations with a government highly reluctant to dedicate a specific museum to his legacy (Marraud, 2009; Mattiussi, 2015). It was essential to gain the support of public opinion, and the vision of his classical ‘garden of sculptures’ undoubtedly was a sound strategy to persuade the lay citizen who might view Rodin’s works as unfinished but appreciated his collection of ancient statues, even though

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some of them had their heads, arms or other body parts missing. Indeed, the postcards promoting the ‘museum’ initially depicted mostly headless figures romantically scattered amidst bushes and brambles in the gardens. Most of them were placed on low pedestals or directly on the grass, including a replica of one of the figures of The Burghers of Calais, Jean d’Aire, commissioned by Dujardin-Beaumetz, deputy secretary of state for fine arts. That sculpture, firstly displayed in the Pantheon, became part of the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg in 1915, but it was soon transferred to the Musée Rodin and placed on a low plinth in front of the Hôtel Biron on a difficult to establish date, as were the other pieces which majestically decorated the lawn by the southern side as featured in a postcard, where this statue appears at the forefront of the museum building (Figure 5.3). The decision was undoubtedly taken by Léonce Bénédite, who simultaneously acted as the director of the Luxembourg Museum and as Rodin’s adviser from 1916 to turn his old friend’s collection into a museum. After Rodin died in 1917, Bénédite became the first director of the new museum which opened in 1919 without much institutional fuss. Discretion was a virtue he cherished, and his personal commitment was to promote preferably Rodin’s most classical artworks, the favourites of the general public.8 However, as a complement to that walking burgher, Bénédite put in the garden, also on a low pedestal, The Man Walking (both statues of walkers

Figure 5.3 Sculpture garden of the Musée Rodin in Paris, Rue de Varenne (Vintage postcard)

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are featured in a famous photograph taken by Charles Berthelommier, wrongly dated in 1910 by the Photothèque du Musée Rodin). Another version of this walking man with no head or arms had been installed in 1912 by Rodin himself on a high plinth at the embassy of France in Rome.9 Yet Bénédite chose to ignore the sculptor’s late preference for high podiums because at the time his friends were defending the elimination of pedestals as one of Rodin’s most innovative legacies. Moreover, in the early 1920s when Bénédite himself wished to open the estate in Meudon to the public, he had another monumental version of the burgher Jean d’Aire, made around 1903 or 1904 in glazed ceramic by Paul Jeanneney – a pseudonym of the potter Paul-Cyprien Loewenguth – installed amongst the antiquities in the garden, at ground level, of course, just in front of the Villa des Brillants and by the entrance to the pavilion housing the art gallery (as can be seen in an image from the time edited by the Bernès and Marouteau photo agency, featured in Garnier, 2015: 153). It was his way of supporting those who demanded that the original monument to The Burghers of Calais be installed by the Calaisiens on the paving of their main square, where it was provisionally displayed in 1919, though it was not until 1924 that it was finally transferred there. The municipal corporation of Calais had had lengthy debates on where it should be located, and many of Rodin’s friends, including Paul Gsell and Rainer Maria Rilke, lobbied for the change, claiming that the great artist had been affronted because his intention had allegedly been none other than placing the sculpture on the paving of Place d’Armes, which they argued by partially quoting words of the sculptor – whose ideas were often contradictory, always pleasing all mythomaniacs determined to praise him as a genius. So high was the universal acclaim enjoyed by Rodin in the last years of his life and even more after his death that, under such public pressure and with a growing feeling of guilt, the corporation of Calais eventually came to place the controversial monument on a low position in this central square, at the museum’s doorstep.10 It thus added to the city’s main attractions for tourists at the Place d’Armes: the Tour du Guet, the Beffroi and the historical building of the city council turned into a municipal museum of art, crafts and natural history which could be expected to attract a larger number of visitors after the renowned local monument was placed in front of it. In fact, some postcards at the time served as excellent publicity as they boasted a viewpoint of The Burghers of Calais in front of the gate over which the large sign ‘Musée’ can be read (and the postcard caption would expressly state the name of Rodin, an exceptional recognition which gives an idea of his great public estimation). Later, following the example set by Calais, other institutions obtained replicas of the monument to the heroic citizens and would place them also quite often by the entrance to their venues so that the group supposedly walking to deliver the keys of Calais to the English king would actually be addressed to visitors as a welcoming committee. Rodin’s most popular creation for this type of location near museums was, however, The Thinker, starting with the version installed on the grave of the sculptor, buried with his wife in the fertile

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grounds before the Musée Rodin of Meudon; its more celebrated monumental version was then transferred to the entrance of the Musée Rodin in Paris, whose gardens were gradually filled with artworks by him or his followers, while antiquities were removed to be better preserved indoors.11 Simultaneously, many other artists who had founded museums would follow in Rodin’s wake.12 For instance, Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, who in 1923 settled in a new house-workshop built by the corporation of Oslo next to Frogner Park, fulfilling the terms of a contract inspired by the precedent of Rodin, according to which the artist would decorate the park with his sculptures and would bequeath all his artworks so that the house could open as the Vigeland Museum after his death, which occurred in 1943 during World War II, a reason why its opening would be delayed for a few years. Another European example emerged then in Lisbon when sculptor Diego de Macedo, a great admirer of Rodin, was appointed director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art. In order to gain independent access, separated from the adjoining headquarters of the Academy of Fine Arts, he inaugurated in 1945 a main entrance through the stairs of a terraced garden displaying monumental sculptures from the museum collection, mostly nude figures on small plinths, which would flank the arrival of visitors ascending from Serpa Pinto street (Noronha, 2017: 115, 129–131). There are obvious similitudes with the open air display of sculptures outside the walls of the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, but that museographical tradition was discontinued when that institution closed down and its new headquarters were transferred to the officially called Palais des Musées d’Art Moderne. It overlooks a bank of the Seine that then bore the name of the capital of Japan, from which the building took its popular name, Palais de Tokyo, a denomination that suits well the winks to Zen aestheticism of its terraced piazza adorned with ponds, gardens and statues, presided by a huge monument by Antoine Bourdelle, Rodin’s most outstanding disciple.13 This Rodinian fascination spread meanwhile to the United States of America, where classicizing monumental sculptures by him or other contemporary artists were keenly displayed in front of the classical architectures of museums at the turn of the century. In fact, that was already common practice for civic buildings of the City Beautiful Movement. The starting point of this fashion is usually considered to be the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, one of whose pavilions, surrounded by meadows, would later become the venue for the Art Institute and was adorned in 1894 with two gigantic bronze lions commissioned from Edward Kemeys, an American animal sculptor. Similarly, in 1912 the solitary sculpture of an Indian riding a horse, Cyrus Dallin’s most celebrated work, was placed before the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Significantly, the large flight of steps up to the new building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art inaugurated in 1928 was decorated with two monumental riders consisting of copies of the Amazon fighting a panther by August Kiss and The Lion Hunter by Albert Wolff, the originals to be found on each side of the Altes Museum of Berlin. This came about at the

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request of the numerous and highly influential population of German origin in Philadelphia, keen on complementing another pre-existing German sculpture: the equestrian monument to George Washington by Rudolf Siemering. Therefore, a monumental ensemble was created, providing the first capital of the North American republic – which had strived in so many ways to promote itself as the new Rome – with classical emulations of the statues of the Dioscuri with their horses flanking the steps to the Capitol and the equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius. Just in front of these sculptures a Rodin museum was inaugurated in 1929, with The Thinker presiding over its entrance: Would this mark a new museographical start outdoors? One swallow does not a summer make. The monumental urbanization of that green suburb was yet far from constituting a variegated open air museum collection comparable to the sculpture gardens at the Luxembourg Museum or the Rodin Museum in Paris. The same can be said of the French-like precedent of the Legion of Honour Museum in San Francisco, which consisted of an impressive collection of European art housed in a building replicating the Parisian palace of the same name on a hill with stunning views over the California Bay: Rodin’s The Thinker was placed in front on a high plinth when the institution was inaugurated in 1924; the statue has ever since acted as a symbolic bond between the European collection of the museum and its urban backdrop. A similar connecting role is played by another monumental bronze version of The Thinker placed on a high pedestal in front of the Detroit Museum of Art in 1927, or in Philadelphia, outside the aforementioned Rodin Museum, whose facade is a replica of the Issy-les-Moulineaux Palace at the Rodin Museum of Meudon. Such Rodinian figures were part of the collection of the respective museums but would remain permanently displayed as emblematic public artworks at their doorstep. No museum curator would dare move those sculptures, turned into icons. Thus seems to be the case of The Thinker at the entrance to the Cleveland Museum of Art, where it had originally been placed indoors in 1917 but was later taken outside to preside over the view of a garden inaugurated in 1928: not even a bomb could get it removed.14 Many other instances of museums throughout the American continent would boast a monumental statue by Rodin or other great figurative artists combining classicism and modernity; yet the prototype of a museum with an attached sculpture garden was a modern innovation deserving separate consideration.

5.2 Urban museums with sculpture gardens: a typical dream of the Modern Movement Whereas the Musée du Luxembourg and the Musée Rodin in Paris or their emulators did not break away from classical monumental traditions but maintained a reinterpretation of the status quo, the advocates of avant-garde art proposed more radical approaches. Modern Movement architects abhorred the chaotic and crammed growth of historical cities and proposed instead carefully planned and regularized blocks of detached white or glass buildings

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that sprouted out of the ground, rising up to produce pure geometrical forms surrounded by peaceful greenery. This ideal was transplantable anywhere in the world and to any kind of use. It served both to erect machines à vivre in the shape of beehive towers and to design mansions where the modernity of their architecture would be highlighted with paintings and sculptures or other modern artworks appropriately displayed indoors and outdoors. For instance, Villa Noailles was built between 1923 and 1927 by Robert MalletStevens on a hill in the city of Hyères on the French Riviera for a sophisticated married couple who were keen patrons of Picasso, the Surrealists and other avant-garde artists: they had the villa decorated with a so-called Cubist garden presided over by sculptures created by Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens, outlined against views of the bay in the background. Terraced or hanging gardens ornamented with sculptures were then designed for luxurious villas by Forestier, Garnier, Guévrékian, Guínzburg, Le Corbusier, Mallet, Mies or Wright (many of them featured in Lurçat, 1929). In order to materialize the attractive idea of integrating all arts, the modernity of their architecture would be enriched by collections of cutting-edge design, painting and sculptures appropriately displayed inside and outside. Thus, some of their most ambitious projects would be devoted to innovative exhibition pavilions or museums of modern art, located in new urban areas. Then the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925 set a new landmark in this matter, especially because of Lipchitz’s Cubist sculpture placed in front of the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, designed by Le Corbusier, though paths leading to other pavilions were also punctuated by modern art in the open air. In contrast, at the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life, also held in Paris twelve years later, modernist sculptures were partially eclipsed by the intense political tension between the bombastic pavilions of Germany and Russia, which faced each other and were respectively crowned by colossal statues of the Nazi imperial eagle opposite a Bolshevik worker and a female peasant brandishing the hammer and sickle. The most cutting-edge public art by avant-garde artists was at their side, around the modest pavilion of the Spanish Republic, provided with a ‘talking facade’ of propaganda posters flanked by daring modern sculptures. Two monuments of powerful political symbolism and intensively emotive topics linked to the Spanish Civil War were placed in front of the building, the Montserrat by Julio González and a tall – 12.5 metres high – sculpture by Alberto Sánchez, The Spanish People have a Path that leads to a Star. There were also outdoors two statues by Pérez Mateo, a victim of the war, plus two Surrealist works by Pablo Picasso: Head of a Woman, also placed in front of the entrance, and Lady making an Offering, located in a garden on one of the sides (Martín, 1983: 67–106). It took longer for such experimental novelties to apply to public museums, not even to those specializing in the latest art. Unfortunately, the new venue for the Museum of Modern Art of Madrid was never built. It had been designed in 1933 by one of Spain’s pioneering champions of rationalism

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in architecture, Fernando García Mercadal, who planned an indoor sculpture patio around a central fountain, or impluvium, adorned with graceful bushes while the facade – which was to give on to the green avenues of the Nuevos Ministerios district – was to boast stylized sculptures on pedestals. Whether these had been imagined as ornamental monuments or belonging to the museum’s collection is unknown (Layuno, 2003: 98–101). In 1934 the international conference on museography organized in Madrid by the League of Nations advocated decongesting exhibition areas and opting for less architecturally rich halls in favour of more functional ones. However, the obvious solution of emptying crammed museum interiors by placing some of the items from the collections outside was not even mentioned in the recommendations for modern architectural renewals.15 In this sense, the next remarkable step was taken at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, when John D. Rockefeller donated a site to the institution to have a sculpture garden outside its brand-new building.16 This open air space was designed by John McAndrew, MoMA curator of architecture, who was influenced by Surrealist poetics, marking itineraries with undulating lines in the gravel pavement and with semi-enclosing screens used as backdrops for the artworks. And very Surrealist or Cubist-like, yet mostly figurative rather than purely abstract sculptures, were the samples from the museum collection selected by director Alfred Barr Jr. The photographs of its inauguration in 1939 show hedges and a surrounding railing only symbolically enclosing the perimeter of the area as they could not act as a tight enclosure and would certainly attract the attention of those walking along 54 West Street, enticing them to look through the fence and, should they like it, go inside: unlike the more introverted nature of the succeeding redesign in 1953 by architect Philip Johnson with landscape artist James Fanning, resulting in a ‘Japanese garden’ enclosed by a rather opaque fence in order to create a bubble of calm and beauty in the heart of Manhattan (Hunter, 1997: 20, 25; Reed, 2007). The so-called Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden would thus be like a reclusive backyard, sheltering modern sculptures in a natural frame of trees and water ponds rather than opening the museums towards West Fifty-fourth Street, the other choice eventually favoured in the twenty-first century.17 This taste for displaying avant-garde arts and edifices in natural quietness, out of urban hassle, was shared by the greatest apostles of the Modern Movement in architecture. Le Corbusier himself, who was a visual artist as well as an architect, always advocated the integration of all arts, preferably enhanced by natural rural settings. In 1930 when he had described his project for a museum of modern art in the journal Cahiers d’Art, he proposed placing it on the periphery of Paris, even in the middle of a potato or beetroot field, providing a railway or tram line was available not too far: he would erect there as humble a building as a Carthusian monastery in a vast enclosed site where visitors could also walk on the grass and enjoy the surroundings full of flowers, bushes, trees and sculptures in the open

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air.18 Perhaps some of the organic forms he drew in his renowned sketch for a musée à croissance illimitée around the square spiral building, raised on pilotis, were not shrubs but sinuous sculptures of Surrealist inspiration (Muñoz Cosme, 2007: 194). This complied with the ideals of convergence of the arts promoted by the Association pour une synthèse des Arts Plastiques founded in 1949 at Le Corbusier’s home, in the presence of, amongst other partner friends, influential museologists, such as Jean Cassou and GeorgesHenri Rivière (Calatrava, 2010). In fact, sculptures would act as an artistic backdrop to many of his museum projects. He even designed some statues to adorn the complex of civic buildings he constructed between 1950 and 1955 in the centre of the city of Chandigarth in India. Unfortunately, the detailed ornamental programme Le Corbusier had planned was only partially developed, as a posthumous homage, when the monument The Open Hand was erected amongst mango orchards.19 The cultural complex he also designed at the time in the same country on commission from the municipality of Ahmedabad was never completed either: a civic area by the river Sabarmati where only the building of the museum Sanskar Kendra was erected in 1954; later, some of the monuments were added but not the other structures or sculptures on high pedestals which were to adorn the gardens – regularly flooded during the monsoon season. Later, his National Museum of Western Art, inaugurated in 1959 in Ueno park in Tokyo, also boasted a courtyard with trees and flowerbeds as well as monumental sculptures: Bourdelle’s Hercules the Archer and Rodin’s The Thinker, Adam and Eve, The Burghers of Calais and The Gates of Hell. Likewise, the plans of his ambitious 1962 project for an International Art Centre in Erlenbach, Germany, which was never built, included a section he expressly called jardin des sculptures. Nonetheless, this type of natural-artistic shrubbery was consistently devised in a monastic manner – following the medieval tradition of the hortus conclusus – as an open air space within an enclosed perimeter where natural and monumental amenities show the spiritual path to be followed by visitors towards a variety of intimately introvert constructions, as the museum was complemented by a polyvalent space for performing arts he chose to call Boite à miracles, or other buildings isolated from the outside by surrounding walls.20 Mies van der Rohe’s museum buildings were much more extroverted. Thanks to his free-plan architecture and transparent walls, visitors could freely view the interior and exterior and enjoy the works of art against the beautiful background of the surrounding natural settings. His Barcelona Pavilion of 1929 was already complemented by an exterior sculpture by George Kolbe,21 and especially in his well-known article titled ‘Museum for a small town’ published in 1943 by the journal Architectural Forum (vol. 78, no. 5, pp. 84–85), Mies had advocated for visual continuity in the display of artworks both inside and outside museums interconnecting with natural vistas: the first illustration published in this essay featured a sculpture on a pedestal surrounded by grass in the foreground, a museum behind and mountains in

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the background (Neumeyer, 1991: 322). That sculpture, sketchedly drawn by Mies, looks like a recumbent woman, redolent of some of Henry Moore’s figures. The rounded amoebic forms of this modern sculptor or of others, such as Calder, Lipchitz or Arp, would be present in innumerable projects seeking to install art in public areas around Modern Movement buildings, whose architects have always felt lured to contrasting dynamic curved and orthogonal lines (Montaner, 1997: 162). Mies designed the Cullinan wing added to the Museum of Fine Art in Houston with a modern sculpture garden which did not materialize, but when his new Brown wing was inaugurated many years later, a monumental abstract interpretation of a red crab by Calder, his favourite sculptor, was placed on the front grass area. Following these examples set by Le Corbusier, Mies and other modern architects, in the aftermath of World War II a new architecture/urban model of buildings surrounded by flowerbeds and outdoor sculptures was becoming an emblematic landmark, characteristic of the golden years of triumphant modernity. Generally, International Style architecture prevailed on both sides of the Iron Curtain, though some external details revealed significant differences: public statues in the communist block predominantly followed socialist realism while the new buildings of Western corporations or institutions were surrounded by figurative or abstract statues whose significance rested not on their iconography but on the fact that they were signature pieces by the most reputed avant-garde artists. This trend became pervasive in the United States of America where a milestone was the new modern facade of the Walker Art Centre with a sculpture by Lipchitz presiding over the flowerbeds by the entrance (Figure 5.4), inaugurated in 1944, at

Figure 5.4 Facade of the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, inaugurated in 1944

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the junction between Minneapolis Downtown and the Uptown orthogonal enlargement; although its famous sculpture park was added much later.22 In 1959 Frank Lloyd Wright attached a quadrant to the Guggenheim Museum in New York to act as a sculpture garden, while that same year Louis Kahn designed the courtyard of the Yale Gallery of Art (Álvarez, 2007: 314–315). Three years later Alexander Calder was commissioned to create his mobile-fountain Hello Girls, the first artwork to be displayed at the sculpture garden of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Hancock Park. Likewise, this happened in the brand-new museum buildings flourishing in new districts of buoyant cities throughout the American continent, including, for example, Rio de Janeiro, where the flagship of an urban expansion on land reclaimed from the sea, Aterro do Flamengo, was the new Museum of Modern Art inaugurated in 1948, whose building was designed by Eduardo Reidy, an architect who collaborated with landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx in the creation of a garden considered in itself a great artwork, or Belo Horizonte, where the Museu de Arte da Pampulha opened in 1957 in a former casino built by Oscar Niemeyer surrounded by a garden designed as well by Burle Marx in the green belt called Jardim Atlântico. In Europe too, some early instances of museums built during the expansion of cities were surrounded by gardens, particularly in the Federal Republic of Germany, like the Museum am Ostwall of Dortmund, built in 1947 on the boundaries of the historical city centre. Another remarkable case was that of Moderna Galerija of Ljubljana opened to the public in 1948 in the diplomatic quarter of the Slovenian capital under the non-aligned communist regime of the Yugoslav Marshal Tito. That same year Peggy Guggenheim took up residence in Venice at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. Soon afterwards she began to display sculptures outdoors, in the gardens, a practice continued by the museum opened there in her memory. Another pioneering instance was the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, a bold building amongst water and green areas designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage and inaugurated before the war. After 1949 a collection of sculptures was also installed outdoors, starting with the statue of a child by Fransje Carbasius, followed some years later by a female nude by Charlotte van Pallandt and a large abstract sculpture by Henry Moore (Figure 5.5). In the following decades, one of the best examples was the new building of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Turin, opened in 1959 next to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, displaying outdoors the equestrian statue Conquistarore by Davide Calandra and the abstract Figura Sha by Franco Garelli; other pieces have subsequently been added on the surrounding lawn. Or the modern sculpture garden which gradually took shape in the environs of the Moderna Museet of Stockholm on Skeppsholmen island, starting with a 1961 mobile donated by Alexander Calder and a monumental version of Picasso’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe. This form of outreach, attracting the attention of passers-by with samples of avant-garde sculpture displayed in exterior gardens gradually became canonical for many museums, particularly

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Figure 5.5 Sculpture garden of the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (Vintage postcard ca. 1950)

those specializing in modern art. It was not infrequent to resort to posthumous casts of Rodin’s bronze statues or to later enlargements of small-sized originals signed by renowned pioneers of modernity, from Calder to Moore, even if these experimental works were initially intended for indoor display in homes or galleries. They could well be considered emblematic ‘trophies’ proudly presented as a public endorsement of the modern canon in art and, often surreptitiously, of the cultural ideology of the Cold War (according to the political dialectics in public statues of the communist and capitalist blocks uncovered by Michalski, 1998: 107–171). The case of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie of Berlin is perhaps the most symbolic instance. It was inaugurated in 1968 in the Tiergarten district – green lung of the capitalist side of that divided city – with a ‘sunken’ sculpture garden (Storrie, 2006: 153) strategically located on a lower level ground so that people could see it from above before entering the museum, but museum visitors would be able to enjoy it from inside the building too, either accessing from the lower floor or contemplating through a glass wall this intimate but spectacular SkulpturenGarten (Figure 5.6) where jazz concerts took place in the early years. Besides, there was also an outdoor terrace above presided over by Alexander Calder’s Heads and Tailand Henry Moore’s The Archer. The titles or motifs of these two sculptures of childish reminiscence were seemingly free of any political connotations. Precisely because of that, these two Surrealist abstract works were the antithesis of militant socialist

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Figure 5.6 Sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (Postcard ca. 1968)

realism. Obviously, the public authorities in western Berlin wished to stay well away from any form of art engagé (Grasskamp, 1989: 144), favouring instead a more politically innocuous type of art for this intimate public space of the museum, withdrawing from the peremptory concerns of German citizens. In an identical effort for discretion, equally based on North American patterns, a sculpture garden was set in Rome by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, in the green district of Valle Giulia, starting with a 1971 statue titled Pace sulla Terra, inspired by the classical icon of Hermes carrying a ram – in Greek, κριοφόρος – ubiquitous in Christian tradition and donated that same year by its author, Jacques Lipchitz. It is a detail, carved in travertine marble, taken from his monumental bronze sculpture Peace on Earth, now located next to another work by the same author, Return of the Prodigal Son, facing the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, whose front garden prominently boasts Rodin’s The Thinker: these ‘modern classics’ set the grounds for today’s striking collection in the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park, with much more recent and provoking artworks; but this museum originally started the expansion of its collection outdoors very timidly, opening in 1972 the discreet Elmer F. Pierson Sculpture Garden on its south-eastern side. In tune with that ideal of prudish classical hedonism, landscapist Dan Kiley designed the sculpture garden for the celebrated multi-tiered terraces at the

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Oakland Museum, a building created by architects Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo inaugurated in 1969 on the modern side of the city near Lake Merritt. Two years later, art patrons Dominique and John de Menil opened to the public another oasis of spiritual retreat near Houston’s Museum of Fine Art on the campus of the Catholic University of Saint Thomas, the renowned Rothko Chapel – wherefrom the venue for the De Menil Collection would be built, along with two satellite buildings dedicated to Cy Twonbly and Dan Flavin. The piece chosen as public ornament for the peaceful neighbourhood was Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, one of its monumental versions, made of Corten steel dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King, which stands in the middle of a pool in front of the entrance to the chapel-museum. In 1972 the building designed by Louis Kahn for the Kimbell Art Museum was inaugurated in Fort Worth with gardens designed by Isamu Noguchi, finished off later with his sculpture installation Constellation on the southern flank. Some years later a Miró sculpture was placed at the museum entrance. Another modern locus amoenus was also the destination eventually conceived for the art collection donated by Latvian American industrialist Joseph Hirshhorn. Some of his sculptures were placed outdoors in a garden designed by Gordon Burnshaft in the late 1960s and early 1970s next to the cylindrical facade of the museum in the heart of Washington: a bunkerlike building erected during the Vietnam War on Independence Avenue, the thoroughfare running through the green heart of the capital, The Mall, brimming with patriotic monuments. Against this not at all innocuous political backdrop, 1974 saw the inauguration of a canonical compendium of modern sculpture, including Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Jacques Lipchitz, Duchamp-Villon, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, David Smith and others. An artistic lineage going from the École de Paris to Abstract Expressionism following the MoMA model, so challenged after the crisis of the modern paradigm, though the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden would remain unquestioned thanks to its outreaching effort displaying part of the collection on the street. Following this example, at the turn of the twentyfirst century, a large number of museums with sculpture gardens have once more become conspicuous in city centres, as in the case of the National Gallery in Washington, opened to the public in 1999 just opposite the Hirshhorn. Even in Europe, this trend is exemplified by the parterres flanking the Oslo National Gallery or by the Jardin des sculptures created next to the western side of the Musée d’Art Ancien in Brussels, where a return to the origins of this model has been implemented even in terms of its contents, so focused around Rodin and his followers. On the other hand, it is hard to find a museum which does not display an emblematic sculpture by its side, as a visual attraction for the institution sometimes even becoming its logo or public image; but they mostly play the part of monumental ornament, far from the original modern perception of sculpture gardens and terraces as an extension of the exhibition area outdoors.

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5.3 Seeking greener pastures: modern art expansion in parks or rural estates It is worth considering apart, in a final section, the modern fascination for suburban parks and, beyond green borders – gradually colonized by cities – the fatal attraction for exporting urban sprawl to natural fields. The history of all civilizations has reserved a special symbolism to the fronds that are not properly countryside or townscape but at times diluting the behavioural patterns typical of rural society or urban life. As the nineteenth century advanced, urban growth gave special modern significance to those contact zones of cities and their natural hinterland (Marsh, 1982; Choay, 2001). Not surprisingly, such interface areas became the favoured stage for great exhibitions and cultural events, dazzling masses of visitors: Hyde Park in London, Champ de Mars in Paris, the Prater in Vienna or the Tivoli in Copenhagen attracted citizens with pavilions displaying scientific, archaeological, ethnological or artistic pieces. Equally, modern examples of ‘sculpture parks’ flourished in the green belts of cities: for instance, Frogner Park in Oslo with the monumental statues erected by Gustav Vigeland, which perhaps inspired the sculptural ensemble of Brancusi in a green area on the outskirts of Târgu Jiu. At the turn of the century, suburban parks or farms also became the favourite location chosen for many modern art museums, such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1898 or many of the modern art galleries created in the great cities of Italy, such as Milan’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opened in 1903 in the estate of Villa Reale or that of Bologna founded in 1926 in Villa delle Rose. Consequently, the mental and urban associations between the places chosen to display modern art and green areas were very naturally assumed at the beginning of the twentieth century for the foundation of new art institutions. An important historical and artistic landmark in this sense was the City Beautiful Movement that in many American cities expanded cultural amenities in suburban parks, where monuments, museums and colleges were often clustered, in a symbolic return to the mythical origins of academies in classical antiquity. These would be remarkably represented by the candid Neo-Grecian buildings of four major museums surrounded by lawns – and by sculptures as the years went by: the Albright Art Gallery, inaugurated in 1905 between the University of Buffalo and Delaware Park; the Cleveland Museum of Art, between Wide Park and University Circle, on the outskirts of the city, whose sculpture garden was instituted in 1928; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, opened in 1928 in Fairmount Parkway; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, inaugurated in 1929 near the campus of Johns Hopkins University. The prototypical North American university soon was characteristically located amongst green meadows fitted with sports facilities, plus some museum services and a library, all of which were beautified by certain pieces of public art by renowned artists. This model of campus was exported to the rest of the Western world after World War II: most significantly the Federal Republic of Germany adopted it

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with the museums on the campus of Dahlem in the south-east of Berlin. The design of this type of project was often given to great architects of the Modern Movement who frequently sought the collaboration of their artist friends. In the United Kingdom, war had aborted an ambitious project of Walter Gropius for a new ‘village college’ in Impington, near Cambridge, where a public sculpture by Henry Moore was to be installed. Therefore, when London County Council decided then to organize temporary displays of art outdoors in public parks, Moore seemed the obvious choice. His successful exhibition of sculptures displayed at Battersea Park in the summer of 1948 had turned him into the most popularly acclaimed living sculptor. From then on, as had happened to Rodin previously, his works were a must for any collection of international modern art indoors or outdoors. These and other names, a safe enough bet, became the established modern canon enshrined by the sculpture biennales of Antwerp since 1951. In the southern periphery of this Belgian city, an old country house called Middelheim had been donated by its owner to the municipality, which turned one part into the campus of the Rijksuniversitair Centrum Antwerpen (RUCA) and the other half into a public park where, following the trend at the time, the city council decided to hold modern art exhibitions. They started with a temporary show of international sculptures from Rodin onwards, which attained great success; thus, the momentum grew not only to organize biennial exhibitions but also to assemble there a permanent repertoire of modern sculptures. Thanks to the purchase of some works and to loans from Antwerp’s Museum of Fine Arts, a collection was put together representing pioneering artists of the twentieth century from the Paris School – Rodin, Marini, Bourdelle, Maillol, Renoir, Gargallo, Manzù – or their Belgian counterparts, Constantin Meunier, Constant Permeke and Rik Wouters. The following year saw the incorporation of the sculpture King and Queen by Henry Moore who, along with Ossip Zadkine, became one of the main advisers to the museum. Following their recommendations, subsequent purchases concentrated more on living artists who had been invited to take part here in biennial exhibitions where their works could be examined and judged in situ, in contact with nature (Bentein-Stoelen, 1969). Thus, a permanent collection – that is, a museum proper – was established by the mayor of Antwerp, Lode Craeybeckx, the main promoter of the project, who decided to call it Open Lucht Museum. That was already the name of an institution restaging peasant culture on a farm in the outskirts of Arnhem (the Netherlands), and in many other languages any evocative ethnological display outdoors was usually called ‘open air museum’. Hitherto, that designation had never been used before for an art collection, but there is always a first time for everything: perhaps this socialist politician wanted a working-class attraction, somehow comparable to that innovative museum type where, despite its staunch label, visitors would also enter inside some houses or farms, exactly the same as in this case the art tour of the premises also included some enclosed areas in the old mansion where the reception, offices and documentation services were

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located, while delicate and small sculptures were placed in a greenhouse23 (Figure 5.7). What may be admired in Middelheim is actually both a municipal park and a museum with visiting hours, labels and educational activities, though entrance tickets are never needed, not even during the sculpture biennales. People can walk, run around, play and freely access the estate through any of the entrance gates, and it is thus enjoyed by citizens as a public space, admiring the constantly changing colours and light on the artworks. It is a changing ‘museography’ created by nature, though also partly by artists, as they usually choose a suitable location for their artworks or even conceive them for a specific site, though the professional opinion of the curators also plays a part, seeking interrelations between artists and works with distinctive common features or, as in any museum setting, offering new perspectives by changing the location of some pieces from time to time. Not unlike the so-called sculpture parks, a name resulting from a different cultural tradition rather than from a different concept, with plenty of overlapping instances – in some other contemporary cases, the term museum and sculpture park was preferred.24 Whatever the name chosen, more and more museums would display their collections of sculptures expanded into natural environments. This is what happened in the case of the Museum Kröller-Müller in the national forest of Hoge Veluwe outside Otterlo, a small town in the south-east

Figure 5.7 Beeldentuin Middelheim Museum, with the manor house and orangerie in the background (Postcard ca. 1975)

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of Amsterdam. The building, designed by Henry van der Velde, exclusively housed the collection of the founders, mostly consisting of paintings of artists ranging from Van Gogh to De Stijl. This ensemble was considered as a closed collection, like a historical testimony of modern art taste before World War II, but in the 1950s it was complemented by a sculpture park devised by its director, Abraham Hammacher, as well as landscape architect Jan Bijhouwer, and was opened to the public in 1961. In 1965 it would be expanded with the addition of a pavilion, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, with transparent walls for displaying smaller sculptures. At this point, the garden continued to inspire the acquisitions made by the institution to show the evolution of art; put on display in the green area surrounding the original museum building were the works by Rodin, Bourdelle and Maillol or Lipchitz, Arp, Barbara Hepworth and other pioneering artists, while the works of later artists tend to be placed farther away, even deep within the forest. Was this a labyrinthine teleological trail similar to that implemented at the MoMA in its permanent exhibition rooms? It is hard to say. Doors could not be put up in the open countryside, so no fixed track could be imposed on visitors as they wandered about the park. Such itinerary may be implemented only by indoor museography, either inward-looking, as in the Kröller-Müller Museum, or the opposite, as in a comparable museum of modern international art built by the Danish magnate Knud W. Jensen, whose architecture is more outward-looking (Tzortzi, 2015: 198–200). Louisiana, as it is called, was a manor house in Humlebaek, to the north of Copenhagen, opened as a museum in 1958 to display his collection housed in a growing circuit of connected constructions. In parallel with that museum display, sculptures were gradually placed outdoors on the surrounding meadows with beautiful sea views of the Øresund channel. Once more, the chosen stars were Arp, Calder, Max Ernst, Henri Laurens, Miró and Henry Moore. Thus, an established canon of modern authors whose names and more celebrated works would be conspicuous at different museums surrounded by sculptures – at times with identical pieces, either replicas or part of a series. Art collections in the open air may not have been arranged by imposing the severe ‘white cube’ display prevalent indoors, but the storyline told outdoors was nevertheless the same, conveyed according to the modern narrative of progress, from Parisian avant-garde to North American Abstract Expressionism and their European counterparts. Abiding by this canon and implementing it on green suburban meadows so closely linked to the impetus for the colonization of nature in the United States was an option loaded with political significance at the time of the Cold War. When in 1960 composer and impresario Billy Rose inaugurated the Billy Rose sculpture garden between the Israel Museum and the Hebrew University in the new districts in Western Jerusalem, he was asked what ought to be done in case of war with those modern and mostly abstract works located in the gardens designed by Isamu Noguchi. He is said to have sternly replied, ‘Melt them down for bullets’. Whether true or not, it

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is unquestionable that Western champions who publicly promoted modern art also followed an ideological strategy. Further landmarks in the expansion of the American way of life around Europe in terms of museums were set by the inauguration in 1962 of the Museum of Art of the Twentieth Century in the Sweizergarten of Vienna25 or the opening of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in 1969 in a suburban estate in Lisbon, where architects Ruy Athouguia, Pedro Cid and Alberto Pessoa designed several modern buildings and landscapers António Viana Barreto and Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles created beautiful gardens, which were populated by some sculptures and artistic interventions in the open air.26 A lot has been said about how European allies imported the standard white cube museography enshrined at the MoMA of New York but not so much about its equivalent outdoors, another idiosyncratically North American prototype in terms of location for experiencing art, set in beautiful natural scenery colonized by modern sculptures and architecture, where staff and visitors resembling brave settlers could drive from the city in conquest of greener pastures. It is quite curious that one of the finest analysts of this modern colonization of natural landscape was Marxist French intellectual Henri Lefebvre. He pointed out the proliferation of infrastructures and lifestyles in the countryside, which had nothing to do with rural traditions but were spreading instead post-industrial urban behaviours (Lefebvre, 1970). Two of the most outstanding French instances of this cultural conquest of rural territory were inaugurated by Gaullist minister André Malraux on the Côte d’Azur. On the one hand, the Foundation Fernand Léger, created by the artist and his wife to display his multicoloured sculptures in the open air and his paintings in a building located on the estate called Mas Saint-André near Biot, opened as a museum in 1960 which was donated to the State seven years later: Malraux presided over its official inauguration not only as politician but also as a personal friend who had written a famous bestseller on a wall-less museum of sculptures. On the other hand, the foundation set up by art dealer and editor Aimé Maeght, who bought an estate on the outskirts of Saint-Paul de Vence where he had a series of lodgings and workshops built for his favourite artists – despite the opposition and obstruction of suspicious locals – included a sculpture park amongst pine and olive trees surrounding a museum and exhibition hall designed by Josep Maria Sert and inaugurated in 1964 (Birksted, 2004). Such was the torrent of people that they soon had to drop the original idea of a rural retreat for artists who would live surrounded by art and nature, a dream made impossible mainly because of Giacometti’s illness and early death, though Miró was so deeply committed to the project and delighted with its results that some years later it continued to inspire his own initiatives.27 Following suit, in 1965 Museum Pagani was opened to the public in the rural estate of Castellanza, near Milan, by artist and dealer Enzo Pagani, native of neighbouring Legnano. The collection consisted of works by the versatile founder, who was a painter, a sculptor and a mosaicist, as well as

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works by like-minded artists, including marble pieces by Jean Arp or Alexander Archipenko, mosaics by Nadia and Fernand Léger, Gaston Chaissac, Sonia Delaunay, Man Ray or Ettore Falchi, and works made of all types of materials donated by artist friends or even created in situ during a stay on the estate, surrounded by beautiful meadows and woods where buildings for a museum, exhibition hall, theatre and other structures had been erected. This instance is closely related to the aforementioned in Louisiana or to the North American models not only because of the size of the sculpture park but also because it is private property status – ever since the founder died in 1993 it has been managed as a foundation by his heirs – though determinedly public orientated: to the point that access has always been free. Generally speaking, North American museum models set the standard at the time for all Western culture. Perhaps more remarkably so in Latin American countries, geographically and politically closer, albeit with uneven results. In Brazil, the best instance of the colonization of suburban lawns was marked by the move of Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, founded in 1948 on the initiative of New York’s MoMA and transferred in 1959 to suburban Parque Ibirapuera, where four year later was also established the new Museum of Contemporary Art: two venerable sister/rival institutions whose headquarters are both now almost face to face in that urban district, but their respective sculpture gardens are quite recent. Other US allies followed suit with green suburban locations for their newest art museums. Bosque de Chapultepec, at the time on the outskirts of Mexico City, was the chosen stage to build the Rationalist building of the Museo de Arte Moderno solemnly inaugurated in 1964, when the gardens planned by landscape artist Matsumoto were still unfinished, and it took many years to complete the existing park of modern sculptures surrounding the area. In the 1970s many other South American museums would imitate North American models both indoors and outdoors. The final period of the Modern Movement standardized the urban paradigm of museums of art isolated from the hustle and bustle of city life by a bucolic wrapping: modern sculptures or art installations located in gardens, squares, fountains or ponds. This political-cultural model of modernity reached its peak when it was also taken on by distant nations in the process of fast Westernization, such as Japan. A pioneering and politically significant landmark had been the inauguration in 1959 of the National Museum of Western Art, built by Le Corbusier and his Japanese followers in Ueno park in Tokyo. However, the most relevant example in peripheral parks was the opening to the public in 1969 of the Open Air Museum of Hakone, a town in the mountains renowned for its hot springs and fertile volcanic countryside. The typical statues by Rodin, Bourdelle and Miró, as well as one of the world’s biggest collections of sculptures by Henry Moore, constituted the canonical starting point of this great museum of modern art, managed by the powerful media group Fujisankei, which also boasts over three hundred works by Picasso displayed in a pavilion dedicated to his ceramic work. And,

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Figure 5.8 The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Giuliano Vangi “Grande Racconto” in front of one of the museum buildings (Credit: photo kindly offered by the museum)

apart from the so-called Picasso Pavilion, there are four other buildings for different uses, namely the Main Gallery, Green Gallery, Art Hall, and Multi Hall (Figure 5.8). Thus, despite being called Open Air Museum, it is actually a museum partly indoors and partly outdoors, like the one in Middelheim, and may not be considered different from other museums of modern art whose imposing buildings are surrounded by lawns and sculptures in a bucolic enfolding. It is also the case of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, opened in 1979 in a Bauhaus-style mansion surrounded by gardens in Tokyo, or of other successful Japanese and South Korean instances, the later testimonies of the special cultural predilection in these Eastern countries for the modern art museum and natural park combination. Reversely, East Asian influence was evident in the pioneers of North American land art who experimented with the new concept of ‘sculpture in the expanded field’ away from the urban art establishment.28 Despite the pretentiously rebellious attitudes of international modern sculptors, these experiments set in natural environments did not usually convey any form of political commitment; they simply used their artworks as a bridgehead for conquering territories by the expanding urban modernity, but this could also be brandished by the authorities as evidence of the tolerance of official taste and of support of the Western culture. Curiously enough, while open air sculpture museums and sculpture parks constituted an innovative cultural phenomenon in Europe’s parliamentary democracies and in the United States of America, their emulation in other capitalist countries under

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totalitarian regimes became paramount of a cultural policy which, forced by convenience rather than actual conviction, was defended by some military dictatorships backed by Washington. It was no coincidence that Pinochet’s rise to power in Chile was followed in 1974 by the transfer of the Museum of Contemporary Art from the centre of Santiago to the Parque Forestal. Also under a military dictatorship backed by the United States, the National Museum of Modern Art was founded in Guatemala in 1975 and placed on the outskirts of the capital’s historical city centre in Finca La Aurora. In Greece, the International Style new building of the National Gallery of Art with its adjacent sculpture garden was planned under the Regime of the Colonels, which did not last long enough to inaugurate it. Spain can be a better instance: one of General Franco’s last public events was the inauguration on 11 July 1975 of the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, a modern building erected outside the historic centre of Madrid (Jiménez-Blanco, 1989; Layuno, 2003: 137–149), whose gardens held a large outdoor collection of sculptures, mostly abstract. This stereotype also reached the Middle East. In 1977 the shah of Persia ordered the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Park Laleh, at the time a suburban zone near the university in the north-west of Teheran. Indoors the museum housed a survey of Western masterpieces from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism and Pop, while outdoors the concrete and glass building was surrounded by sculptures by Magritte, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Giacometti, Marino Marini, Henry Moore and others. Curiously enough, in the United States of America the so-called sculpture parks were reaching their peak at the time. Later on, a counter-model arose in Europe which defended the postmodern return to the city fabric, reclaiming the utopian label ‘open air museums’ – though the museological prototype of this designation had nothing to do with these contemporary art collections in urban public areas.

Notes 1 The Platonic combination of garden and sculptures symbolized the combination of the beauties of nature and those created by human hands (Bradburne, 2008). 2 Or even during the twentieth century when the Jeu de Paume and Orangerie Museums were inaugurated in the Tuileries, whose gardens would often be used by both institutions for open air art interventions. Afterwards, on the initiative of the Minister of Culture André Malraux, these gardens were adorned with sculptures by Maillol and other modern and contemporary artists. 3 In the case of the statue dedicated to the priestess Veleda, carved in 1847 by Etienne-Hypolyte Maindron, the marble turned out to be so fragile that by 1869 it was badly damaged and two years later had to be replaced with a replica. The original was left by a staircase in the side entrance of the Musée du Luxembourg (Bresc-Bautier & Pingeot, 1986, vol. 2: 307). 4 Exhibited in 1877 in Brussels and at the Salon in Paris, The Age of Bronze caused great outrage – because of groundless allegations that a direct mould of the

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original had been used. Once Rodin demonstrated the truth, Edmond Turquet made amends to him by commissioning a version in bronze which, after having been displayed and given an award at the Salon of 1880, was then incorporated into the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg by virtue of a decree of 22 November 1884, though it was placed outdoors in the garden and was not registered with the museum until 1901 (Pingeot, 2000). Although the Museum of Living Artists had ceased to be dependant on the Senate and was run by the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, des Cultes et des BeauxArts, the latter counted on the complicity of the High Chamber which, in order to avail of the entire palace of Luxembourg, paid for the adaptation and extension of the neighbouring orangerie, a greenhouse originally used to keep the orange trees. Le Faucheur by Eugène Guillaume continued to stand at the corner, and the parterres were occupied, for instance, by L’Improvisateur by Félix Charpentier,Fatalité by Ernest Christophe, Berger et Sylvain by Léopold Steiner, Phaéton by Edouard Houssin, Chevrier by Raymond Barthélemy and others. Some of them may be found at http://paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris06/jardin_du_luxembourg/le_ jardin_du_luxemboug_1900.htm (retrieved on 30 June 2017). By the end of the century, some artworks from the collection were placed outside the Nationalgalerie amongst the hedges of the Kolonnadenhof, some of them had been expressly commissioned by the museum to contemporary artists: eight of them still remain today in this public space, all of them made of bronze. Following this trend, in Madrid the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, located in the Biblioteca Nacional since the former was founded in 1898, installed some pieces from its collection in the surrounding gardens. These included La Defensa de Zaragoza, a Neoclassical work by José Álvarez Dumont, Eclosión, a Rodinian sculpture by Miguel Blay and Hermanitos de leche, an academic creation by Aniceto Marinas (for this information I am indebted to Leticia Azcue, curator of Museo del Prado, who is investigating the evolution of this ‘sculpture garden’ throughout the twentieth century). Bénédite gathered together in a special room those sculptures by Rodin whose more modern fragmentary conception made them more unconventional (Le Normand-Romain, 2011: 59–72). Provoking great controversy because Rodin insisted on placing it in the middle of the yard of the Farnese Palace, where it disturbed the flow of vehicles; thus, heeding the diplomats’ protests, in 1923 the State deposited it at the Musée de Lyon, where it remained until 1986 (Pingeot, 2000: 71, note 37). Annette Haudiquet narrated in detail this convoluted story, not easy to sum up. In December 1917 a technical report was ordered on ‘how to reinstate the work of Rodin following the master’s conception’. In March 1918, faced with the proximity of the war front, the monument was dismantled and stored until the end of that year upon the advice of the museum, at the time placed at Place d’Armes. It was installed in that central square for a few months, during which several expert committees, many journalists and the general public expressed diverging opinions. In December 1919 it was placed inside the museum lobby. But in March 1920 it was placed again in its original location next to Richelieu Park, though in 1924 it was resolved to erect a monument there to those fallen during the Great War, and The Burghers were once again taken back to Place d’Armes, with the intention of placing them on a new one-metre high architectural pedestal which proved to be too costly. It was then provisionally decided to place them on a low base surrounded by the neo-Gothic railing which had traditionally enclosed the settings, though it was sawn up to make it shorter. The historic figures were flanked by other patriotic monuments: the busts of Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke of Guise. On the facade of the former city hall building, turned into a

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museum, stood a sculpture by Cortot portraying Eustache de Saint-Pierre: a historicist iconography matched by picturesque medieval buildings nearby. It was all destroyed during World War II, save for Rodin’s monument, which had been once more stored in a municipal warehouse in the summer of 1939 and removed for safe keeping in 1943. It was taken back to the city in the autumn of 1945. The historical downtown of Calais had been razed to the ground, and the monument was taken to another conurbation zone laden with symbolism between the two historical cities, in front of the new building of the city hall – a neo-Gothic structure built between 1911 and 1925 – where it was set on a very low pedestal (Haudiquet, 2001). The popular monumental version of The Thinker erected before the Pantheon of Paris was transferred in 1922 to the doorstep of Hotel Biron, where it has stood since at the view of visitors and neighbours of Parisian Musée Rodin, as it shows above the wall surrounding the area at Boulevard des Invalides. A bronze version of The Burghers of Calais, incorporated into the collection in 1930, may also be admired outdoors through the openwork perimeter wall in Rue de Varenne. Beginning with his most famous disciple, Antoine Bourdelle, who in 1922 started to plan the musealization of his studio and sculpture garden in Montparnasse, though at his death in 1929 everything was still to be done and only thanks to private patronage and an agreement with the city council of Paris it was opened to the public in 1949. Young architects Jean-Claude Dondel and André Aubert had won the international competition of 1934 for the main pavilion of the 1937 International Exhibition. They were backed by veterans Paul Viard and Marcel Dastugue, which guaranteed a restrained innovative approach with hints of classical tradition. Sculpture decorations cover three hundred metres squared of the southern facade and adjacent terrace consisting of allegories of the arts or land or sea legends. Alfred Janniot and Léon Baudry made the reliefs on the facade, while Louis-Jules Dideron, Auguste Guénot, Pierre Vigoureux, Anna Quinquaud and Félix-Pascal were in charge of the sculpture agenda around a large statue of Apollo as the god of arts, a commission carried out by Charles Despiau. This statue was not finished in time, so they provisionally placed a gilded plaster copy of a monument to La France by Antoine Bourdelle. It is nine metres high, though it was originally intended to be a colossal statue, which had been commissioned by the French government in 1922 to be placed on a hill on the Gironde estuary facing the Atlantic as a tribute to the landing of North American troops during World War I. That project never materialized, but in the meantime Bourdelle had already offered a reduced version to his hometown, Montauban, as a memorial for those who had fallen in the Great War. It was inaugurated in 1935, and that year also another nine-metre-high version was erected in Algiers. The corporation of Algiers placed the statue in different locations, and it was finally installed in front of the Musée des Beaux-Arts where it remained up until 1961, when it was blown up by Algerian activists. It was then repatriated by the French army, restored and placed in a military school. The plaster version in front of the Palais de Tokyo was replaced in 1948 by the final bronze statute on the initiative of the Association des Français Libres, with an inscription dedicating it to those who had fallen fighting for the freedom of France from 1940 to 1945. The feet and pedestal of Rodin’s sculpture were destroyed by a dynamite attack in 1970, but it continues to stand before the steps leading to the museum with no restoration of the missing parts, as it is one of the few versions made by the artist himself: www.clevelandart.org/research/in-the-library/collection-in-focus/ rodins-thinker (retrieved on 15 June 2017).

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15 The minutes compile many illustrations showing the bucolic settings of North American and some European museums (Schmidt-Degener & Maclagan, Sánchez Cantón & Foundoukidis, 1935, vol. 1: 26, 47; vol. 2: 319), but only in two of them are the surrounding gardens decorated with sculptures and other items from the collections: these photographs correspond to the patios of the Museum of Córdoba (Spain) and the Detroit Institute of Art (United States). 16 The document announcing the donation by John D. Rockefeller of a site to provide a garden for the MoMA for displaying sculptures was published in the journal Mouseion in 1937 (it is reproduced in Bolaños, 2002: 128). 17 Another occasion lost would be the 1964 expansion of the building and back garden of the MoMA, with the acquisition of the former Whitney Museum of American Art. Philip Johnson was in charge again, adding more glamour to this open air display but accessible from the lobby only, not the street; a connection gained at last with the 2004 renovation by Yoshio Taniguchi. 18 Letter from Le Corbusier to Christian Zervos, director of the journal Cahiers d’Art, dated to 8 December 1930 (Bolaños, 2002:128, footnote 7). 19 It was built in 1985, and it is today Le Corbusier’s most celebrated monumental sculpture, though there are smaller versions of the same motif where several symbols were condensed. Kenneth Frampton claims that India prompted Le Corbusier’s tendency towards cryptic expression, mixing the local archaic culture with his own personal cosmology (Frampton, 2001). 20 All the museum projects designed by Le Corbusier, whether or not they were executed, are listed at the web page of Le Corbusier Foundation (and studied in Boesinger & Stonorov, 1969). 21 The classicism of the female nude figure highlights the formal quality and value of new architecture. Her curved lines contrast with the orthogonal structure of the architecture, though they are not in competition (Besset, 1993: 9). 22 In 1971 this building was replaced by another; Calder’s mobile was then installed in front of the facade and sculptures were placed on several terraces on top of the building, where the urban skyline is the background for Lipchitz’s sculpture and for others by David Smith, Robert Morris and many more. 23 For safety reasons, some artworks were kept in the orangerie or in temporary buildings until the pavilion designed by architect Renaat Braemen was inaugurated in 1971 (Pas, 2010: 12–35). 24 Mainly in North American estates where sculptures are displayed in the fields but also paintings and other collections are exhibited indoors. DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park is an excellent example, in the periphery of Boston, specifically in Lincoln (Massachusetts): a manor house bequeathed by industrialist Julian de Cordova (1851–1945), whose art collection was sold in order to purchase modern art as decided by its board of directors which opened it to the public in 1950; but the excellent art collection displayed in its gardens was installed in later decades. 25 From 1979 to 2001, it operated as collections storage space, which was empty when they were transferred to the Museum of Modern Art – Ludwig Foundation in the new Museums Quartier; in 2002 the building became managed by the museums of Belvedere Park, that have converted it since 2009 in its section for twenty-first-century art – 21er Haus. 26 Seconded in the 1980s by those of the Fundação Serralves, in the outskirts of Porto. 27 Miró wanted the same architect, his friend Josep-Lluis Sert, to design his foundation in Barcelona, created in 1971, but this triggered the reservations of the Franco regime, and it was not inaugurated until 1975. The sculpture garden next to it was not created until 1990, overlooking the city from the green hill of Montjuïc.

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28 Following Rosalind Krauss (Krauss, 1979), there is extensive bibliography on this topic, and the role of museums and galleries is increasingly defended. In fact, Robert Smithson presented many land art projects in institutional exhibition spaces, as did Donald Judd, who in 1979 purchased, with the help of Dia Art Foundation, a property in the Marfa desert (Texas), where he eventually opened to the public his own collection, managed by the Chinati Foundation (Beardsley, 1984; Lailach, 2007).

Part III

Museums taken to the streets

6

Open air museums as an urban phenomenon

A museum is, primarily, a concept, not an edifice housing a collection within its walls; this is a truism often repeated by museologists, though the common use of language tends to identify museums with buildings sheltering cultural treasures inside. Ever since its creation in 1946, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has considered botanic gardens, zoological reserves and archaeological sites as proper museums on the grounds of a concept developed from 1961 to 1968 which comprises any permanent facility where a series of cultural items are managed for the common interest. After the approval of the new ICOM statutes in 1974, the definition was further expanded to encompass open air heritage. In the ensuing decades, extending the museum notion beyond the walls of a building would become a favourite claim. Radically opposed to traditional institutions created by political or social élites to display opulent collections, the nouvelle muséologie emerging then supported the groundbreaking social concept of an expanded museum, called ecomusée by French activists Georges-Henri Rivière and Hugues de Varine Bohan. Their proposal consisted of replacing authority-created collections of items removed from their original locations with the musealization in situ of an entire human ecosystem upon the community’s initiative, who would take charge of its management. It was a fascinating experiment, about which much has been written, especially by experts in ethnology and archaeology, disciplines more prone to that territorial socialization of heritage. Yet far from remaining unencumbered, the arts sector went through a parallel phenomenon: the proliferation of permanent ensembles of modern sculptures outdoors, sometimes termed sculpture parks, while in other places they would be proudly called open air museums, even though they were often created from the bottom up by artists and their friends, with no institutional character. Like the ecomuseums, they were frequently located in rural environments as well, but similarities end there because they would never become the hobbyhorse of either the New Museology or the so-called New Art History, both developed during the 1970s and 1980s. However, the present trend for in situ musealization of street art is changing our perspective; therefore, this chapter focusses on retracing some urban antecedents in the history of open air art museums.

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6.1 The rural genesis of open air museums – of ethnology rather than art The concept of an open air museum constitutes an appealing aspiration whose origins go well back in time. A great fondness for picturesque gardens adorned with classical kiosks, memories of medieval remains, Chinese pavilions or quaint cottages proliferated throughout Europe in the eighteenth century. But such made-up structures reached their peak at the Universal Exhibitions held in the nineteenth century, the direct precedents of pioneering museum models usually viewed as references in this typology. The first permanent display of this kind regularly open to the public is considered to be the ensemble founded in 1881 by king Oscar II of Norway in his summer estate of Bygdøy, on the outskirts of the capital, displaying replicas and original pieces of typical Nordic architecture.1 Traditional constructions on wood were replicated by artisans who considered them as genuine as the ‘original’ buildings, as practically all their wooden pieces had been replaced throughout the centuries. But their location was no longer the original, and the clustering of such architectures, usually scattered around distant landscapes, was not truthful either. However, no one seemed to find fault with such blunders: after all, visitors were used to finding these reproductions displayed at colonial exhibitions or other temporary shows. Based on this model, a further step in this type of imaginary recreational-didactic reproduction was taken in 1891 near Stockholm, when ethnologist Artur Hazelius founded Skansen, an ideal Nordic village offering visitors not only traditional buildings but also an immersion into Sweden’s past, material and immaterial culture, explained by actors-performers dressed in period costumes.2 Only a year later, folklorist Georg Karlin opened other similar museum in Lund called Kulturen, and in 1901 set designer artist Bernhard Olsen inaugurated, not far from Copenhagen, the so-called Frilandsmuseet. Curiously enough, the name ‘open air museum’ became the habitual identification of this new category, despite the fact that visitors would spend most of their time under cover looking about inside those typical buildings while listening to the explanations given by a fictitious blacksmith, shopkeeper, farmer or housewife. This denomination became global, being adopted in many languages: in Finnish, its counterpart would be Ulkomuseo, a name given by Professor Axel Olai Heikel to a similar project founded in 1909 on the island of Seurassari, near Helsinki; in German, the dominant name was Freilichtmuseum, and one of the earliest was founded in 1910 in the seaside periphery of Bad Zwischenahn; the Dutch equivalent label would be Openluchmuseum, used in 1918 for the main example of this kind in the Netherlands, established in a estate on the outskirts of Arnhem. On the eve of World War I, there were at least forty-four such establishments in northern and eastern Europe: they all sought to represent the past not only through vernacular architectures and traditional crafts but also by means of immaterial heritages to be conveyed by performing actors, wearing typical clothes

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(Oliver, 2001: 192). Its fortune also expanded through the United States of America, mostly as a result of the success of Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia), a recreation of a pre-Independence city built on private initiative in 1926. That year the first trailside museum was also founded: this new model of museum interacted with nature by offering visitors a trail to be followed, hence its name. It was developed by California architect Herbert Maier, who created the Trailside Museum at Bear Mountain in Palisades Interstate Park and another in Yosemite Park in 1928. Many more ensued, evoking the pioneers’ houses on prairies. That patriotic link with North American collective imagery would soon set a landmark in Greenfield Village, an ideal museumvillage with a collection of historical buildings from various locations gathered together in 1929 in an estate in Dearborn (Michigan) by industrialist Henry Ford (Bennett, 1995: 116; Gómez Martínez, 2006: 249). A similar blend of rustic/natural and nationalist exaltation had always been present in its European precedents, though it would reach its climax under the German Third Reich, which turned the network of open air museums and Heitmat Museen – museums of the fatherland – into a tool of Nazi propaganda (Roth, 1990). Yet elsewhere, open air museums would not be any less chauvinistic, traditionalist or populist, almost invariably combining nationalism and localism, just as their offspring institutions worldwide, catered by specific ethnological associations and abundant specialized bibliography.3 Quite the opposite from the international, modern, urban and innovative nature of the sculpture collection opened to the public in 1950 by the municipality of Antwerp in Middleheim Park, surprisingly called Open Lucht Museum, a puzzling choice bearing in mind the little interest shown by open air museums towards artists and the arts, with the exception of traditional architecture and crafts. Though on reflection, similarities do exist – for example, its far-off location in a former rural estate on the outskirts of a large city. Or the fact that, despite its name, this open air museum also features significant venues indoors, sheltered in some buildings which house part of the collection and services. It is not much different in practice from the architectural/ urban model of the modern art museum, with an annex of sculptures placed in green surroundings: a very fashionable museum paradigm in the Western world during the years of the Cold War. Its counter-model was invented by the idealist Austrian sculptor Karl Prantl (1923–2010) in his homeland in Burgenland, bordering the then communist states of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. This pacifist and theosophist artist chose the ancient abandoned quarry used since Roman times in the municipality of Sankt Margarethen to hold the Symposium Europaischer Bildhauer in 1959. That year only eight participants attended, but it later became a prestigious global event emulated in many other countries under the name International Sculpture Symposium. Its goal was to promote good relations among all sorts of artists of any style or nationality, living together and developing their creativity collectively, working outdoors in full view of the inhabitants of the surrounding natural environment and before the eyes

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of visitors spending some time in such countryside setting.4 That ideal was sociologically linked to older experiments of alternative communal life in the mountains, such as Monte Verità in Switzerland, which had also attracted artists from its inception, but it became widespread worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s, along with hippy communes and other alternative options outside the mainstream. From an aesthetic point of view, they broke from academic canons while moving away as well from modernist usages, as their advocacy of direct sculpting in situ opposed, on the one hand, transcontinental exports of monumental versions remotely made of sketches bought from consecrated modernists masters like Calder or Picasso and, on the other hand, they ran counter to the philosophy of Conceptualism, an art movement separating artistic authorship from direct manual work. But above all, Prantl and his followers were the antithesis of the dealer/gallery system offering art as a commodity to be consumed. Far away from the temples of art, they were seeking withdrawn natural environs for sculpture and other art forms, encouraging people to become actively involved in their projects, beyond mere contemplation of the resulting works of art. All this also differentiated them from the proposals of land art, widespread from 1968 onwards in the United States of America, though with interesting points in common given that those North American artists who worked in remote deserts or mountains did not always wish to highlight a contrast between the immensity of the landscape and some individual artwork, as they sometimes placed several pieces together, even by different authors, in the same field. However, it never crossed their minds to call these ensembles of artworks open air museums, as they were supposedly trying to disassociate themselves from the establishment, even in matters of terminology. Sometimes the result could be described as a sculpture park, though in practice this concept did not differ at all from a museum foundation inasmuch as its purpose was to preserve, interpret and disseminate a permanent collection. The term museum was less a taboo word in Europe, where that architectural concept was being revised and expanded to a territorial projection by theorists of the socialist block and seconded by influential museologists in the ICOM. On the other hand, after the founding in 1965 of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), some archaeologists and urban planners fashioned the – rather odd5 – expression ‘site museum’, referring to an open air site or enclosure where historical heritage is conserved and interpreted in situ, bringing no external elements, save the modern materials used for reconstructing some parts – anastylosis – or other forms of didactic explanation. Sometimes contemporary works of art would be placed on these sites to add to their appeal, as in the case of Gibellina. That picturesque locality in Sicily was destroyed by an earthquake in 1968; a new town was then built nearby, designed by some of the greatest urban planners and architects of the time, while the picturesque old ruins were preserved; but that musealizzazione was complemented by an appeal to artists, who made abundant contributions and continue to do

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so. These range from works by Arnaldo Pomodoro and Pietro Consagra which were placed in the new town, to interventions in the old ruins, such as the works by Alberto Burri, a specialist in land art. They have enhanced the museumesque quality of the città, which has thus often been described as a utopian open air museum (Zuliani, 2009: 94–95). However, the Italian expression museo all’ aperto is more typically used for initiatives that show and explain historical heritage: a prehistoric necropolis, a citadel, a Roman forum or theatre or any other archaeological site preserved and displayed in the open air – although often partly sheltered under a large roof and surrounded by a fence – accessible to the public according to announced terms and timetables (Pelillo, 2009). Some archaeologists would take a step forward, using site museums as settings for historical recreations. Hence came the next stage in the evolution of open air museums, recreating historic sites in a more meticulous and modern manner, while the idyllic ethnological reenactments of old farming communities would gradually give way to a growing interest in industrial archaeology. In England, the first role model would become Beamish, a complex constructed only with original architectural materials and implements.6 That claim to authenticity has been the key to its success since its inauguration in 1972, emulated by similar venues like Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Blackcountry Museum and many others: a fascinating museological phenomenon but not related to the topic of this book because fine artworks are usually missing or rare there.7 The crowds come to enjoy the social experience of an immersion in ‘living history’, playing with nostalgia for the good old days of Victorian and Edwardian age, not devoid of poignant interpretation about the tough labour of miners, factory workers and service staff as well as the hardship endured by women and children, corporal punishment at schools and the like. However, despite the relocation, brick by brick, of genuine buildings, the result could not be but some kind of fake: a theatrically re-enacted human scenography set in a rural unpopulated landscape, an artificial gathering of alien heritages. The most ambitious answer to such objections came out in France during the 1970s under the label ecomusée: instead of building a new settlement using genuine materials but removed from their original location, it was an attempt at museumizing in situ an entire human ecosystem, which in addition would be managed by the community itself. This phenomenon first spread around France and other Francophone territories in Belgium, Canada and Africa and later throughout several countries in Latin America. Once again, this kind of open air museum was located out of large cities, in rural territories whose farming, mining or factory production was precarious: indeed, such museum type was perceived as the antithesis to great museums in capital cities. In the 1980s it became the favourite hobbyhorse of leftist Mouvement International pour une Nouvelle Muséologie (MINOM), whose members were mostly ethnologists, hence fine art and artists were hardly present in ecomuseums, save for the odd monument erected in their symbolic epicentre.8

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On the other hand, progressive artists were then very much in favour of anti-establishment initiatives germinating from the bottom up in rural communities or suburban neighbourhoods. Some were practitioners of land art, but whatever they called their interventions in nature, often the name museum was anathema to them. That was always the case of many international symposia of sculptors spreading the example of Karl Prantl to remote villages of Europe and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, his followers in Spain set notable exceptions during the decline of Franco’s regime, when several artists and activists founded museums of contemporary art, some of them outdoors, like the so-called Museo de Escultura Contemporánea al Aire Libre created by sculptor Pedro Tramullas and the people of Hecho, a little town in the Pyrenees, near the French border, where they have organized international symposia on sculpture since 1975 (Bernués & Pérez Lizano, 2002; Bernués & Lorente, 2013). The great ambition and originality of the quixotic Tramullas and his comrades was to symbolically suture that territory with stone landmarks, tracing the spiritual union between Hecho and the Aspe Valley – across the French border – through a trail of sculptures which, following one of the branches of the Camino de Santiago, would be a terrestrial reflection of the Milky Way and its constellations. These symposiums, organized every summer for ten years, would bring together many artists of masonic affiliations and esoteric beliefs, apostles of an astrologic and naturist spirituality flourishing in that Age of Aquarius. The initial plan was that each invited artist, in exchange for the costs of maintenance, would contribute a work of art, preferably using local stone or other materials provided by the municipality. But not all of them produced monumental sculptures, as some made small pieces which could potentially be stolen, or carvings made of wood or other stuffs which could not be maintained in the open air. Besides, subsequent calls of the symposium gradually opened it to all sorts of art forms, including paintings, photographs or films. Therefore, an old barn was reconverted to house and display the works which could not be placed outdoors. This was perhaps the reason why the ensemble was called a museum and, so as to give the appearance of a proper one, general information panels and individual labels identifying artworks were placed in the following years throughout the prairie and uphill (Figure 6.1). Such museumesque formalities were perhaps aimed at tempering the unease felt by some authorities and neighbours towards foreign long-haired nonconformist youngsters. Those hippies did not even think of registering their ‘museum’ in any official repository; in fact, it is still not included in either the Directorio de Museos y Colecciones Museográficas de España or the Sistema de Museos de Aragón. But the ensemble, with more than one hundred artworks, is a highly important cultural legacy for many reasons, including its grandiloquent name: Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre (Museum of Open Air Sculpture). This designation was marking a difference from similar contemporary initiatives. Another peculiarity is that this

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Figure 6.1 Open Air Museum of Hecho, with sculptures by Tramullas and other artists (Photo: JPL)

ensemble of modern sculptures stretches from the former hayloft building where the visit to the meadows and forests starts, as a few sculptures are scattered around the squares and streets of the village as well: three monumental pieces whose location sought closer interaction with the habitat of the population.9 Whereas the colonization of nature by means of artworks and museums – preferably of abstract art – had been one of modernity’s favourite battlefronts, its crisis would be marked, in many places, by the return to the streets. Another example spearheading such tendency had been set in Madrid by the controversial Museo de Escultura Abstracta al Aire Libre, in Paseo de la Castellana, opened to the public three years before General Francisco Franco died. However, it was not officially inaugurated until 1979 due to the leftist sympathies of the artists represented there, which aroused suspicions in Franco’s dictatorship. In many ways, including its urban location and the total lack of indoor exhibition areas, it became a counter-model opposed to the former paradigms of open air museums hitherto: this instance constituted one of the first experiments signalling a watershed in their evolution during the late modern crisis, which eventually led to the triumphal postmodern return to the urban fabric of museums specializing in contemporary art.

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6.2 A political and urban landmark: Museo de la Castellana in Madrid La Castellana was originally the name of a fountain and its brook in the outskirts of Madrid, but in the nineteenth century the stream had become a great avenue next to the upscale barrio de Salamanca, where a thriving business district had developed during the twentieth century, especially in the sixties and early seventies, years of economic boost when large banks and corporations settled there. Their headquarters featured blatant modern art to enhance their daring modernity.10 In many ways it could be compared to La Défense in Paris, where from 1972 sculptures created by Agam, Calder, Caro, César, Miró, Takis and other masters in modern art were also placed outdoors, a collection often emphatically referred to as Musé d’Art Contemporain à Plein Air de la Défense, Courbevoie.11 But this name only came into use there some time later, whereas in Madrid almost from its inception it was known as a museum, perhaps because the pieces are not scattered around various streets or piazzas but concentrated around a bridge and can therefore be easily perceived as an ensemble. It is difficult to establish the precise moment when and under what terms this museum was conceived. The original project for a bridge over the Paseo de la Castellana to link the streets of Juan Bravo and Eduardo Dato made no mention of it. The bridge was designed in 1968 by the engineers Alberto Corral López-Dóriga, José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez and Julio Martínez Calzón – the first of them did not take part in its completion, which was managed by the other two. This graceful bridge was one of the first to be built in Spain using Corten steel and white concrete. It was a further instance of the flamboyant constructions undertaken by the mayor, Carlos Arias Navarro, in an attempt to alleviate the growing traffic congestion by means of flyovers which gave the ancient city and court a refreshed modern look resembling North American spaghetti junctions. These types of designs are quite controversial to current tastes because the urban perspective is broken up, which is one of the reasons why some of the former flyovers in Madrid have actually been removed. But the case we are examining here has survived, amongst other reasons, because of the art collection it encompasses, as the two most emblematic pieces by Chillida and Sempere are suspended from it. The entire ensemble could somehow be considered a total work of art (Figure 6.2). No doubt the newest official name – Museo de Arte Público – given by the city hall in 2006 alludes to this fact. The metal railing is a masterpiece of Optical art devised by Eusebio Sempere, who also designed the fountain, benches, floodlights and even the pavement. Initially he had just been asked to design the railing by his friends Martínez Calzón and Fernández Ordóñez, who were in charge of the construction, but when the bridge was inaugurated in 1970, they all agreed to complement its decoration with a permanent collection of sculptures by other artists, which they brought together in record time given that by the following year most of these were already in place.

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Figure 6.2 Museum of Public Art, 40 Paseo de la Castellana, Madrid (Photo: JPL)

Artists are generous people who are used to donating their works selflessly or just in exchange for the expenses incurred, and this was precisely the line taken in this particular case – something quite common then in sculpture symposia or public art initiatives. In this sense, many parallels may be drawn between this and other museums also created in the late Franco era resulting from artist donations.12 The talisman word museum seems to have sufficed at the time in obtaining the generous collaboration of many artists. It is therefore hardly surprising that Sempere and Fernández Ordóñez used this label in the summer of 1971 when presenting the final project for the installation of the sculptures, completed by the company Pantanos y Canales S.A. The first articles published in newspapers and specialized journals refer to it as museo de esculturas, museo-parque de esculturas or museo de escultura contemporánea. This last adjective does not seem to have had such an effect on its personality as the noun. Instead of a conspicuous assortment of contemporary art, its promoters perhaps viewed the ‘museum’ as a historical compilation, harking back to the great modern masters of the early twentieth century, even some who were already deceased by then, such as Alberto Sánchez and Julio González, whose

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sculptures in this collection were bronze enlargements of their artworks made with the permission of their relatives. Those two sculptures, along with Miro’s, not only added a surreal look halfway between figurative and abstract art but also introduced inevitable political connotations, given the leftist republican ideals of the authors. This was used to spice up everything cooking in Spanish culture at the time. It appears that simply by leaving the original French title of González’s work, La petite faucille, its motif went unnoticed. It was a tribute to the communist emblem, the hammer and sickle, which had been the subject of a series of sculptures by the Catalan artist throughout the Civil War, and one of these small pieces served as a model for this monumental bronze replica. As the sympathy of leftist intelligentsia was sought and yet no one wished to get into trouble with the authorities, this detail was never publicly revealed under Franco’s regime – not even current guides include this iconographic clarification perhaps lest some extremist right-wing groups might vandalize it, which has happened already once.13 It is even possible that, in order to avoid hinting at possible subversive themes, the founders and the municipality might have chosen to underline the abstract nature of the art collection, giving it the name Museo de la Castellana: Escultura Abstracta. The prevalence of geometric abstraction in the collection was hardly incidental, as Sempere and his circle felt particularly attached to this style. This is likely the reason why, inevitably, it has been repeatedly compared to the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español which had been inaugurated in 1966 at the Casas Colgadas of Cuenca, though significant differences could be pointed out with this precedent, especially if their initial purpose rather than the final outcome is taken into consideration. It is true that both museums would eventually feature works by Spanish artists only, but the founders of the open air art collection in Madrid originally aspired to gather sculptures by great international masters of geometric-kinetic art, such as the Venezuelan Jesús Rafael Soto, the French François Baschet or the Argentinean Alicia Penalba. On the other hand, it seems that it was not their original intention to focus exclusively on abstract art, as they also strove to obtain a version of the head of Dora Maar made by Picasso for the Parisian Monument to Apollinaire installed in Place Laurent Drache in Saint Germain des Prés since 1959. But perhaps the key difference with respect to the museum in Cuenca is the fact that this private foundation had been created from the collection ponderously gathered through the years by Fernando Zóbel, buying works little by little with the collaboration of his friends Gustavo Torner and Gerardo Rueda. Conversely, in Madrid, setting specific criteria to create the collection was this time quite difficult, as it had to be put together in a matter of months and did not follow a long-term policy of acquisitions; on the contrary, it was constituted by impromptu donations made by artist colleagues who were familiar with the project and wanted to take part in it. As an explicit acknowledgement of gratitude, the name of the creator of each piece was written on a plain label, something then uncommon in public

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art and which made the collection appear closer to a proper museum – twelve years later they would be substituted with others bearing more information, including the title, material and year. The ensemble was opened to the public as such in 1972, an event extensively covered by the media, though no official ceremony or speech was given due to the suspicions arising from the seemingly harmless abstract sculpture created by Eduardo Chillida. This famous Basque sculptor had been one of the first artists invited to take part, but due to his heavy workload, he initially put off collaborating and only accepted to be represented with a purpose-built intervention. He did not want a copy made of some of his previous works; instead, he wished to create something specifically for this place. In line with the engineers’ design of the bridge as a new space provided for public use, an aesthetic oasis amidst traffic to propitiate walking and encounters, he devised a sculpture using concave Y-shaped lines which meet and embrace the void in a welcoming attitude: hence its title, Lugar de Encuentros III, whose Roman numerals allude to the existence of two very similar previous pieces. But Chillida had made these former versions with Corten steel, while on this occasion he resolved to use white reinforced concrete in order to match the prevailing component of the bridge. It was his first sculpture of this material, which he chose again between 1973 and 1974 for versions IV, V, VI and VII of the series, for other public spaces in Bilbao, Toledo, Madrid and Palma de Mallorca. The other novelty, inspired by the bridge created by Fernández Ordóñez and Martínez Calzón, was more controversial. Instead of grounding the massive concrete structure on the floor, Chillida proposed to suspend it from the bridge overhead, poised at eye level so that passers-by would fulfil the meaning of its title: Place of Encounters. The engineers declared this unfeasible, as its weight would entail a risk to the stability of the construction, and instead suggested suspending it by means of tight steel cables from the four massive pillars supporting the bridge, always on condition that it did not weigh more than six tons. Chillida did agree to hang the sculpture from the pillars, but its weight exceeded the limit; though after extensive tests and calculations, both technicians decided it posed no structural hazard. Yet these discussions must have somehow reached the ears of the authorities, and in April 1973, the mayor of Madrid had the sculpture removed alleging security reasons, despite the favourable report issued by the designers of the bridge and the Civil Engineers’ Association. This transformed the initial technical debate into a political one, as many suspected that the mayor was using this pretext to curtail the participation of an activist who aroused his personal animosity.14 But the artist’s insistence to have his sculpture floating in the air and his flat refusal to have it anchored to the ground was also interpreted from a political point of view as an allusion to his resistance to being tied down by Franco’s regime. Even the fact that his work lay neglected on the ground awaiting a decision took on public symbolism when it was nicknamed by the media The Stranded Mermaid – a title inspired by the famous play by Alejandro Casona being

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staged at the time. The other artists sympathized with their Basque colleague, especially Miró, who refused to donate his promised sculpture as long as Chillida’s was not put in place. He even managed to have Lugar de Encuentros III displayed in the gallery Maeght of Paris – which turned the controversy into an international issue – and then offered temporary accommodation for this monumental artwork at the entrance of the Miró Foundation in Barcelona. It remained there for many years, prompting artists against political repression to become repeatedly involved in similar art ensembles on the streets.15 In the meantime, the deadlock in Madrid remained unbroken and even worsened after Franco’s death, when the new municipal corporation considered to install Chillida’s polemic sculpture, but the right-wing newspaper Arriba stirred up a public campaign against. Eventually it was the Christian-democrat mayor, José Luis Álvarez, who ordered the piece to be hung in place on 2 September 1978, a few months before the first democratic elections were held. Henceforth, the rest of the pieces in the collection could be put in place; Palazuelo’s and Miró’s were installed in late 1978 and early 1979, which involved moving others from their initial location. Eventually, after all these diatribes, the official inauguration of the museum finally took place on 9 February 1979, with the attendance of its main promoters, Eusebio Sempere with the engineers Fernández Ordóñez and Martínez Calzón, as well as some of the artists represented. They all posed during the ceremony in front of Miró’s sculpture Mère Ubu for an eloquent photograph featuring, not quite by accident, Eduardo Chillida in the middle. From then on, the unintentional central part played by the Basque artist in this open air museum has not dwindled, and his sculpture has become – as befits its original title – a habitual meeting point for numerous citizens.16 It has also attracted the maximum care and attention while the sculpture continues to hang safely: it has not damaged the bridge or fallen down. All in all, the collection has enjoyed good maintenance and safety. This preservation work was precisely one of the demands made to the city hall of Madrid by the Asociación de Amigos del Museo de La Castellana, created with the purpose of completing the project but which remained totally inactive after its inauguration. They did not think of going further and proposing other sorts of actions to ensure that this ensemble of public art would really become a museum deserving that name. Its collection was never expanded with new acquisitions, and no specific staff is in charge of its safety and interpretation. The museum is discretely guarded by the local police and by several security cameras installed in the compound, a no longer quiet place as it has become a favourite spot for skateboarders. Despite being featuring in every guide to Madrid’s museums, today under the name Museum of Public Art, it is arguable whether it ever became a proper one.17 Yet it has never been called a sculpture ‘park’: this would have been rather incongruous here not only because the collection is almost entirely placed on flagstone pavements – there is but a small garden on one of the sides – but also

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for the political connotations linked during the Cold War to loanwords from American culture.

6.3 What’s in a name? Proliferation of the so-called museums of outdoor sculptures The designation for outdoor art collections is not a trivial matter, even if we accept that no major differences in concept exist between the terms open air sculpture museum and sculpture park. The latter category is dealt with by specific international associations of sculpture parks.18 These are especially numerous in the United States of America, in Britain and in Germanic countries, more aligned to that cultural epitome in many ways, even because of their mystification of woods and grasslands mentally linked to the notion of ‘park’. They normally fall outside the scope of this essay because of their location out of the urban fabric; tough sculpture collections displayed in natural environments may also be considered museums, and some of them are members of the ICOM.19 Indeed, it would be far-fetched to draw a line between this designation and the museological terminology used in Romance tongues: such division is refuted in Belgium, where the region of Flanders set historical precedents, especially the aforementioned Middelheim Open Lucht Museum created by the municipality of Antwerp, emulated in the French-speaking University of Liège, since the creation in 1977 of a Musée en Plein Air on the campus of Sart Tilman.20 Furthermore, it has to be admitted that this label pioneered in Belgium – both in Flemish and in French languages – never became particularly common in France, though there is a famous instance in the capital, inaugurated in 1980 on a riverbank between Île Saint-Louis and the Gare d’Austerlitz. Architect Daniel Badani designed there a green promenade – called Tino Rossi Park – commissioned by the Paris city hall, which decorated it with modern sculptures by French and foreign artists from the municipal collection. Yet it was not called a sculpture park but Musée de sculpture à plein air de la Ville de Paris. It would eventually bring together thirty-seven sculptures of various periods and styles, though mostly abstract, the oldest being a piece by Constantin Brancusi, dating from 1920 to 1948. The most recent is an installation by Paris resident and Israeli artist Micha Laury, made in 1988. Unlike other Parisian parks, which are closed in the evening, the site remains open day and night: this fact also sets this ensemble apart from the Middelheim Museum paradigm and makes it more similar to Madrid’s Museo de la Castellana, also because of its central location, very popular any time for walkers and cyclists (Figure 6.3), whose safety and that of the artworks is controlled by security cameras as well as personal surveillance provided by police and garden maintenance staff. Many parallels could be drawn between that Madrilenian precedent and its Parisian peer, including the prevalence of abstract sculptures in a collection which immediately ceased to grow; in fact, some of the most valuable pieces have been removed.

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Figure 6.3 Open Air Museum of Sculptures, Paris, by the Seine (Photo: JPL)

It is a well-known and much visited tourist attraction, in the heart of the city, next to a bateau-bus stop and adequately signposted by street signals. However, few didactic explanations are available in situ: very simple labels on the base of each piece identify its title, material, date, author and place/ year of birth and death of the artist, while more comprehensive information can be accessed online or in specialized books (Dane, 1981; Bastoen, 2009). Similarly, this ensemble never reached an independent institutional entity and does not usually appear in the lists of Parisian museums, perhaps because it lacks the basic functions of a museum declared by the ICOM. Nevertheless, such new commitment to taking museums back to the city centre, following an urban trend set in 1977 by the Pompidou Centre, did not go unnoticed by the rest of the world. As in many other aspects, the élites in South American cities were its most enthusiastic fans. Numerous supporters of the nouvelle muséologie advocated in that subcontinent for expanding new trends of curatorship to territories and common grounds. Likewise, many activists were eager to bring modern avant-garde sculpture into the open air. But they would seldom use words like art museums to designate such outdoor ensembles, likely due to the strong ascendancy there of North American sculpture parks. Sometimes both appellations were blended, for instance, in the Museo-Parque de Esculturas de Providencia, inaugurated in 1986 as part of an elegant conurbation of Santiago de Chile, where large companies and luxurious blocks of houses surround this riverside municipal park, decorated with over thirty sculptures by Chilean artists of different generations and styles (Figure 6.4). They are all labelled with the name of the

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Figure 6.4 Museum Park of Sculptures, Providencia, by the Mapocho River (Photo: JPL)

author, title, material, year and the name of the company or private patron funding it. Floodlights also enhance artworks on grey days, though in the evenings all three gates to this enclosure are shut. An underground exhibition hall was built in 1989 next to the main entrance – with public toilets as well as an area for didactic workshops – and temporary exhibitions are also held in a small square by the river. Should it be considered a museum or a park? Both designations are used here. It is also hard to discern whether it ought to be classed as a late modern sculpture arrangement in suburban green belts or as a postmodern museum-led revitalization of a high street – it all depends on whether the entire metropolitan area of the Chilean capital is taken into consideration or just the municipality of Providencia.21 Another typological amalgamation emerged in the western edge of São Paulo, where the Brazilian Association of Friends of Museums developed between 1986 and 1995 a cultural centre eventually called Museu Brasileiro de Escultura e Ecologia (MuBE), which claims to be a public space and whose collections and exhibitions are distributed not only outdoors but also inside a building designed by architect Paulo Mendez da Rocha. Its Portuguese equivalent is the Museu Internacional de Escultura Contemporânea, founded in 1996 in Santo Tirso, a town in the metropolitan area of Porto, where an outstanding collection – resulting from the symposia of sculpture organized by the initiative of local sculptor Alberto Carneiro – is displayed as a trail of outdoor art interventions leading to the Parque Da Rabada, but eventually they have installed their headquarters in a great building, designed by Alvaro

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Siza. A similar example is the famous sculptural ensemble created by the impulse of Aldo Boglietti in Resistencia (Argentina), often called an open air museum, though its official designation is Museo de las Esculturas Urbanas del Mundo (MusEUM), which is in fact managed today, from a purpose-built edifice, by the Urunday Foundation, in charge of the biennial exhibitions of sculpture and education/communication activities. More cases identified at the same time as open air museums or sculpture parks could also be traced in the United States in the 1980s – for instance, the Museum of Outdoor Art created in the green suburban area of Englewood (Colorado) or the Goldwell Open Air Museum next to the ghost town of Rhyolite (Nevada). Nevertheless, this hybridization of paradigms, compounded with a mixture of nostalgic open air ethnological museum and amusement parks, would reach its maximum exponent in other examples from Eastern Europe. After the fall of their communist regimes, Marxist monuments were removed from the city centres but, instead of destroying or storing them, some capitals opted for gathering this heritage in outdoor collections open to the public. This is the case of the Museum Park of Arts founded by the city hall of Moscow in 1992 or the Memento Park Museum inaugurated in 1993 by the municipal corporation of Budapest.22 Both are ‘graveyards of statues’ clustered in areas which resemble theme parks, where visitors revive memories of official art under Soviet rule. They have very little in common with the museums of contemporary art in outdoor premises analyzed here. Nor do they have much to do with the postmodern return to the urban tissue of many examples of that time in Italy, where the distinction between sculpture parks and open air museums is not nominally defined either. In the years of modern radicalism, remote Italian villages pioneered the organization of international sculpture symposia, markedly anti-establishment, eschewing large cities and the word museum. Only from the 1980s onwards did the name museo al aperto begin to be employed there for ensembles of public art. Was it perhaps a competitive strategy for a supposedly higher linguistic designation? At times, in order to stand out from the typical outdoor ensembles of sculptures, other forms of public art have been chosen, such as painted or ceramic murals, as those decorating since 1984 the facades of the town hall and the houses or main squares of Luicciana (Prato): hence its broader name, Museo di Arte Contemporanea all’Aperto, also used in Maglione (Turin) since 1985 and in Morterone (Lecco) since 1986. The latter, a tiny village on the side of Mount Resegone in Lombardy, claiming to be the smallest municipality in Italy with just thirty-seven inhabitants and no school or pub, has an impressive ensemble of artworks by relevant Italian and international authors displayed near the church, in the streets and on the facades of houses or scattered in meadows and in the middle of mountainous nature. Perhaps parco di arte would be a more appropriate name, though once the ambitious term museum has been coined, it may not be easily abandoned, especially when rivalries with neighbouring towns are established.23

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Nevertheless, a mixture of names is sometimes used in Italy, as in the case of Parco-Museo Santa Barbara in Mammola (Reggio-Calabria), the MuseoParco di Sculture all’Aperto di Portofino (Genoa) or the museum/sculpture park Fiumara d’Arte in the province of Messina; in Italian scholarly publications, this somewhat ambivalent terminology is often used as well (Massa, 1995; Lambarelli & Bigi, 1997; Marzotto, 2007). That is why it is so remarkable the resolute option prevalent in Spain, during the first decades of democracy after Franco’s dictatorship, in favour of so-called open air museums of sculpture located in the heart of numerous towns and cities. The use of the word museum unquestionably involves some form of public commitment and educational drive, as would correspond to any museum institution. However, it does not necessarily mean that good intentions do eventually come to fruition, as sparse human and economic means can hardly live up to such an ambitious name. A difficult enough task for the aforementioned Italian towns, it was equally complicated for middlesized Spanish cities under the influence of the precedent of Madrid’s Museo de la Castellana. These initiatives were often short-lived, when the collection was hardly developed, as in the case of open air museums of sculptures in Toledo,24 Elche25 or Buñol.26 In some other cases, the collection did continue to grow, but the initial aspiration to create a museum was abandoned, as in the case of the campus of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.27 Nonetheless, certain local authorities all over Spain, regardless of their political alignment, did provide lasting official support to ensure the continuity of several open air museums of contemporary art. Because such foundations proliferated throughout the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, they could well be considered a typical postmodern experiment in cultural politics; also because abstract art had then lost primacy, and therefore they opted for an extremely varied array of styles in line with the postmodern motto ‘anything goes’. Many of these open air museums also endorsed a return of public art to the urban landscape, promoting social, economic and aesthetic regeneration policies in their respective cities. Separate mention should be given to the five open air museums founded by the sculptor Pepe Noja. In the early 1980s, a central square of his hometown, Aracena (Huelva), was remodelled, and he was asked to contribute a monument to decorate it. He not only kindly gave one but also persuaded seven artist friends to donate other artworks which were installed, along with their corresponding labels attached to their pedestals when the so-called Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre ‘Andalucía’ was inaugurated in 1986. Its collection expanded later with new donations and currently consists of more than forty pieces located between the plaza de San Pedro, the entrance to the Cueva de las Maravillas or in the streets around the Museo del Jamón, two of the main tourist attractions in this big town (Figure 6.5). The next instance originated in the same province when the municipality of Huelva asked Pepe Noja to set up a similar outdoor collection there. It was inaugurated in the city centre in 1991, on the eve of the celebrations of the

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Figure 6.5 Sculptures in Plaza de San Pedro, part of the Open Air Museum of Aracena (Photo: JPL)

five hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of America. Hence it was named Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre ‘V Centenario’. On this occasion, Pepe gathered together sixty-five sculptures. The collection was initially installed in the narrow streets of the city centre, but this posed problems.28 Some people called into question a crucial idea of the project, the revitalization of the historical downtown through contemporary art, which had been enthusiastically saluted on the cover of the Seville edition of the daily newspaper ABC on 11 June 1991; heavy vandalism – and in some cases total loss – of some artworks forced a change, restarting the museum almost from scratch. Fifteen years later the museum was re-inaugurated in Parque de Zafra with just twenty pieces placed on granite pedestals. Once the lesson was learnt, this other type of urban setting would be chosen by Pepe Noja for the following foundations, all in medium-sized cities. Thus, other green areas became the main urban stage chosen for Pepe Noja’s next project: the Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de Alcalá de Henares, located in this Madrilenian city along O’Donnell Park and the gardens of Andrés Saborit Street and the Vía Complutense, where an initial collection of fifty pieces was opened in August 1993, to which fourteen more pieces were added in 1994 and a further fifty in 1995. These artworks, illuminated

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from ground level, constitute a cultural itinerary which enhances the seventeenth-century wall as a visual backdrop while improving the unattractive neighbourhood built in the years of sudden urban sprawl, when workingclass blocks of flats proliferated in the city limits. The Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de Cáceres was also placed in a green belt of this beautiful Extremaduran city. It was installed in 1997 in Parque del Príncipe, where Pepe once more aligned the artworks tracing a visual itinerary. On this occasion, all twenty-seven sculptures – one per featured artist – were placed on pedestals offering a panoramic display that can be seen as an ensemble. Information boards and individual labels identify the name of the artist and the title of the artwork, a detail Noja had never been keen to specify, supposedly to ‘encourage the highest possible number of interpretations’ (Bazan, 2003). Finally, the museum of Santurce (Vizcaya), created in 2004, repeated a similar scheme with fifteen pieces – some of them monumental in size – donated by the respective artists at Pepe Noja’s request, scattered around the Basque city, though many are concentrated specifically in the central municipal park, which was declared Parque Histórico Artístico because of the large amount of precious trees and sculptures which adorn it. In this case, each piece also has a label with the name of the artist and its title as well as other information provided by the municipal tourist board which promotes this collection of public art under the name Eskulturen Museoa – Sculpture Museum. When asked about his role as museum founder, Pepe protests, claiming to be a progressive artist not very fond of museums or institutional officialdom. According to him, his personal goal was simply to bring contemporary art to the people, and the denomination of ‘open air museums’ was imposed in all five cases by the respective local authorities. Nevertheless, he backed the conceptualization as museums of all those initiatives, being in the five municipalities the main person in charge of forming the collection and its spatial disposition. But the result is not a personal projection of his particular taste or preferences; unlike private collectors and gallerists, who can indulge in private choices, Noja has always strived to combine local and foreign artists offering, with non-tendentious criteria, a broad historical and sculptural spectrum of materials and styles, appropriate for his declared public educational goal. Only for this reason would the name museum be quite justified. Perhaps this ambitious term helped to obtain public funds that paid the expenses of production, transport and installation of sculptures – at times complemented by funding from private companies – although it implied some extra costs for the corresponding labels, brochures and catalogues. The bad news is that the initial enthusiasm of politicians waned soon, especially as municipal corporations changed with subsequent local elections, hence only in exceptional cases have some municipalities continued to make significant investments to repair vandalized artworks or modernize their installation. A special instance could be the Museo de Escultura y Pintura al Aire Libre de Serrada (Valladolid), created in 1991 under the initiative of the then mayor,

152 Museums taken to the streets Luis Alonso Laguna. Although in this case Pepe Noja had no direct intervention and the collection does not include sculptures signed by him, there are some personal connections to be considered, both in terms of reputation – Noja was awarded in Serrada a prize for his sculptural achievements in 2001 – and national politics: Pepe was a militant of the Socialist Party, the same affiliation of Mr Alonso Laguna. When the latter left office in 2007, the number of acquisitions fell, but still the collaboration of artists donating their works to the municipal foundation managing this ensemble continued to spread around the Paseo del Arte, next to the Parque del Encuentro, and other locations around the town. More short-lived was the so-called Museu d’ Instal·lacions Artístiques de Vespella de Gaià (MIAVG), founded in 1995 by the painter and sculptor Rafael Lozano Bartolozzi, who was then mayor of this Catalan town, whose corporation he chaired for twelve years, from 1991 to 2003. However, he acted like any other politician: after the inauguration, with pieces donated by nine sculptors, the collection did not expand, and it has hardly been promoted ever since. A similar fate met the costly investments of the Museo al Aire Libre de Ceutí (Murcia), founded in 1997 by the singular commitment of the mayor, Manuel Hurtado, a prominent member of the Socialist Party in that region. He managed to purchase around one hundred monumental sculptures by celebrated Spanish artists, including one by Pepe Noja, thanks to municipal funding and to the collaboration of the regional government of Murcia and private sponsors. But this always seemed to be his own personal initiative, and after he left the town in 2007 to become a member of the Senate in Madrid, the local collection had no new acquisitions until the addition of a bizarre devotional statue in 2009, situated in Plaza Vieja, in front of the church and close to the Museo Campillo, whose surroundings were already scattered with sculptures, and not far from the new Centre for Contemporary Art La Conservera, inaugurated that year. However, that institution has not assumed the management of this open air collection, which is not perceived as a museum and has never been officially recognized as such. Alas, an even sadder end met the Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre of Puertollano (Ciudad Real), initiated in 2008 by the culture counsellor with ten sculptures placed on plinths in pedestrian streets of the city centre; now only three or four of them remain in situ, all in a pitiful state. Similarly, the Museo de Escultura Contemporánea al Aire Libre ‘Senda de los Doce Puentes’ in Vegadeo (Asturias), started in 2008 by the culture counsellor promoting twelve monumental sculptures financed by an agreement between the local corporation and the regional government of Asturias, has quickly decayed (Álvarez, 2014). The lack of appropriate conservation, as well as interpretative and educational policies, reveals that these collections of contemporary art displayed in public grounds merely act as urban ornament, not quite deserving the pompous designation of museums. This label is used frequently for tourism marketing, but it is not formally endorsed by ICOM or the authorities in charge of museums and cultural heritage. Perhaps the ultimate proof of

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Figure 6.6 Entrance to Leganés Museum of Sculptures, featuring a work by Pepe Noja (Photo: JPL)

lack of official support for these open air museums is that none of those mentioned so far has been inscribed in the official directory of museums and museographical collections in Spain.29 A exceptional case is, of course, the museum of sculptures created in Leganés (Madrid) by the initiative of sculptor Luis Arencibia, a civil servant in the municipal Department of Culture whose ambitious project – because of its growing facilities under roof, used for storage, administrative offices, didactic activities and temporary exhibitions – goes much beyond the usual concept of an open air museum, and in fact it has never been called so (Figure 6.6).30 There could be many other examples showing how often the name museum is used in Spain for urban collections of contemporary art consisting mainly of open air monumental sculptures. Far more rare are sculpture parks in estates and natural areas removed from city centres, even though there are some impressive exceptions run by private foundations, very much in the North American style.31 The semantic variance might not be quite definitive; however, the terminological difference can be revealing of conscious or unconscious positioning in cultural terms. A Spanish speaker using the label museo to designate a collection of public art presumably wants to emphasize that it encompasses a wide range of historical periods, styles, authors and materials, displayed for educational purposes along some ‘museographical’ itineraries, according to an overall curatorial design. That was paramount in all projects led by Pepe Noja and his emulators, eventually undermined by economic recession and the fates of politics. They would be surprised to learn that they were somehow ensuing the tactics of North American trailside parks; with the peculiarity that the display is conceived here in

154 Museums taken to the streets interaction not so much with natural attractions but with other local amenities in cultural districts of our postmodern cities. The yearning, typical of the seventies, for museums without walls, has not died yet, but in the new millennium that flame remains alive across the world predominantly in urban contexts. Spanish cities and towns are perhaps no longer the torch carriers now, but new visionaries are taking over elsewhere, particularly in the streets of Italy. Symposiums of sculpture are still very much in vogue there, multiplying their respective legacies of outdoor artworks donated by artists adept to such contests.32 In a remarkable case, a private collection has been donated by a generous patron of contemporary art for the general enjoyment of fellow citizens and visitors: since 2007 the pedestrianized streets of the centre of the city of Cosenza, in the region of Calabria, are host to the Museo All’Aperto Carlo Bilotti created thanks to the generosity of the eponymous collector whose sculptures – by modern artists, consecrated in the most prestigious galleries of contemporary art – are exhibited outdoors in a museum-like display (Figure 6.7): they are appropriately identified by the respective labels on each pedestal, which in some cases emits light, providing sound explanations and music, thanks to a sophisticated device that entails accurate technical maintenance work (Nava, 2013). What can be deduced from all the examples so far commented? It seems clear that using the term museum instead of sculpture park or other

Figure 6.7 Bilotti Open Air Museum in the pedestrian streets of Cosenza’s city centre (Photo: Adrián Ruiz Cañero)

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appellations does not imply great differences but perhaps expresses a cultural identity to which the founders ascribe. Far from being polar opposites, both notions tend increasingly to overlap, as fortunately also happens with the concepts of museum and public art: this hybridization is opening new ways, mostly through technological interfaces. Particularly in the case of the mural paintings colouring our streets, the most popular form of public art today, whose global visibility in our digital society is assured through the Internet and social networks, also the most effective means for the musealization of this kind of heritage, as it is concluded in the following section.

6.4 An unambiguously urban trend of the present: museums of street art When discussing open air collections of modern/contemporary art, it has been a long-standing practice to refer almost exclusively to sculptures – mostly made of stone or bronze or other weatherproof materials. Paintings which could put up with the elements, such as fresco murals, seemed too traditional or complicated to modern artists and were particularly vulnerable to vandalizing doodles and scribbles. Besides, given their flatness, they could hardly interact with the outdoor changing lights and shadows. Yet painters would turn up from time to time in sculpture symposia and some sculpture parks or open air art museums and display some form of painting as a touch of diversity. Especially as these outdoor interventions returned to the urban environment, where murals gave a touch of colour to the walls of some buildings without hindering circulation along narrow streets or footpaths, as happened in the aforementioned open air museums of Maglione, Serrada or Ceutí with mixed collections of sculptures and murals. However, the recent muralmania spreading all over the world is changing our theoretical perspective, not only due to the present proliferation of mural painting ensembles which are sometimes called museums but also because some of them explicitly hark back to certain historical antecedents, closely related to the Mexican muralists or to the paintings commissioned by the public art campaigns of the New Deal. Thus, a most appropriate starting point for this account could be the collection of murals adorning the steep streets of Cerro Bellavista in Valparaíso (Chile) made between 1969 and the coup of 1973 by an art professor at the Universidad Católica and his pupils, reproducing the paintings of renowned modern artists. This precedent gave artist and culture manager Nemesio Antúnez cause in 1991 to invite other colleagues to decorate this workingclass district with more murals, under the umbrella of the aforementioned Catholic university, which happened to be one of the somehow tolerated foci of protest during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Antúnez had been an exiled and was a notorious opponent of the regime, though obviously neither his mural nor any of the nineteen wall paintings by different artists – including Roberto Matta, Mario Carreño and Matilde Pérez – contain compromising

156 Museums taken to the streets political messages. Furthermore, the participation of university officials and Nemesio Antúnez himself, at the time the director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, marked with institutional respectability this undertaking which was inaugurated in July 1992 under the pompous name Museo a Cielo Abierto de Valparaíso (Mendez Labbé, 1995; Nordenflycht, 2007). This designation is engraved on a graceful metal street arch and on the signs marking the intricate itinerary; it features as well, like a slogan, on each of the labels placed, as in proper museums, next to each piece to identify its author and date. University officials, however, did not bother to request its inclusion within the network of Museos de Valparaíso y Viña del Mar, or in the national directory – MUSA – or in ICOM. This ensemble certainly constitutes today one of the city’s main tourist attractions, as the murals have been complemented with other public artworks, giving the area the picturesque touch of an art district, particularly between the Espíritu Santo funicular and the house-museum La Chascona, where Pablo Neruda lived. To strangers, however, the hill continues to be a hazardous out-of-the-way place which has perhaps failed to incorporate as collective heritage of the local community this ‘museum’ and its communication devices: sadly, all the murals, panels and labels are covered in graffiti (Figure 6.8). This is a striking fact, as graffiti artists generally respect murals previously painted by other artists, according to a code of conduct generally abided.

Figure 6.8 Mural by Matilde Pérez with a vandalized sign at the Open Air Museum of Valparaíso (Photo: Guisela Munita)

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That rule, as long as it is fulfilled, would be reason enough to involve spray artists in rough neighbourhoods. Such was the preferred option in Comuna de San Miguel, a working-class district in the south of Santiago de Chile. There a group of families under the leadership of activists who had taken part in mural projects against Pinochet’s dictatorship launched a great public art scheme. They secured state funding as part of Chile’s bicentenary celebrations in 2010 allowing them to commission ten artists to paint the side walls of buildings depicting patriotic motifs previously agreed upon with neighbours. But another thirty murals ensued which were altruistically painted, with the participation of local kids. This is all common practice in so-called community art projects linked to left-wing cultural politics throughout Latin America; however, the most peculiar outcome here has been the appellation Museo a Cielo Abierto en San Miguel, which is the name published on the Internet and in a catalogue whose first few pages pay tribute to the Museo al Aire Libre de Valparaíso (Soto, Hernández y Villarroel, 2012). In turn, the Chilean precedents of Valparaíso and San Miguel are often invoked by the instigators of both the Museo de Pintura al Aire Libre de Candás (Asturias) and the Museo a Cielo Abierto del Barrio de San Julián in Teruel (Spain). The former was managed together by activists and local authorities in 1980–2005. The latter has been championed since 2010 by a neighbours’ association, headed by activist Pepe Polo, determined to bring colour to the walls of this marginal district located under the viaducts linking the centre of this historical city in Aragon to its suburban area (Prieto, 2013: 149). But although the sign Museo a Cielo Abierto is painted in beautiful letters just in front of the elevator of San Julián, next to the first of these murals, no official directory of museums includes this ensemble. This fits well the staunch anti-establishment impulse of a grass-roots initiative operated by local citizens intending to beautify their own streets and houses, though a degree of institutional support is now increasingly associated to their ongoing festivals of arte urbano. The latter designation is a trendy idiom, whose combination with a museum name has a well-established European precedent, which arose in Turin, in the working-class district of Borgo Vecchio Campidoglio, where two art itineraries were created in 1996 and 1998 with the gracious collaboration of post-graffiti artists. The initiative came from a citizens’ collective, including Professor Edoardo Di Mauro, a member of Turin Municipal Directorate for Museums and Exhibitions. In 2000 he promoted the designation Museo d’Arte Urbana di Torino. One year later it was registered as a museum and has since carried out, with municipal funding, numerous activities ranging from mere street signs to guided visits, didactic workshops and online diffusion. A venue for temporary exhibitions and other cultural events was opened in 2014. But meanwhile, the number of murals has grown, and thus the museum remains loyal to its original commitment to urban art. Graffiti is an Italian word generally used now in many languages to describe illegal name/tag writings, and thus some scholars call post-graffiti a further

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evolution of this practice presenting more elaborate artistic pictures, often authorized or even sponsored. Street art is the prevalent English appellation, rather inaccurate and still facing a lack of agreement on its meaning (Ross, 2016). Whatever the case, its social appreciation has soared to the point that major collectors and museums compete to acquire outstanding examples. It might seem rather contradictory to take street art out of the street, yet many museum buildings are now housing ‘masterworks’ of this trend, which is the declared speciality of new museums open to the public in cities like New York or Berlin. More coherent seems the musealization in situ promoted by local authorities and citizens’ associations who take care of the conservation and public enjoyment of ensembles of murals in their original emplacement. Even in the case of those created as temporary interventions, if they have become visual icons of their neighbourhood, people rightfully consider them as a common heritage deserving permanence for posterity. Usually their public success rises insofar as they reflect collective identities and are linked to urban regeneration initiatives, as in the case of Zagreb’s Muzej uličneumjetnosti (MUU), a collection of murals started in 2010 along the south side of Branimirova ulica, the street connecting the bus and train stations, continued the following years in the Novi Zagreb suburbs of Dugave and Siget, whose grey apartment blocks of the 1960s and 1970s have gained colour and public attention. This process is comparable to the transformation which has been in place since 2011 in the working-class district of Nieuw-West in Amsterdam through painted murals. Ukrainian-born Anna Stolyarova is leading this project, lending her home to artists coming from all over the world to paint, unpaid, the walls provided by neighbours. There are now over thirty murals by international artists which are representative of the street art phenomenon, but most interestingly, they have been registered since 2014 as Street Art Museum of Amsterdam (SAMA), with Anna as the director and a staff of part-time collaborators in charge of the guided tours or other activities that can be booked via the Internet.33 Similarly, a collaborative effort between artists and residents of Old South Baton Rouge in Louisiana started in 2013 a project of urban regeneration, putting colour back into a declining district: their houses are being decorated with street murals celebrating community values and icons painted by artists who come as guests invited by a local activist, Kevin Harris, who is the fundraiser and director of the so-called Museum of Public Art, as it is proudly heralded on its website.34 Websites and Internet search engines are in fact of capital importance for these initiatives to reach public visibility, as most viewers of street art see it online. Unlike three-dimensional sculptures, painted murals are quite effectively rendered on digital photographs, disseminated through social networks and communication technologies. Thus, the museum labels or information panels for street art ensembles are most times essentially devised for the World Wide Web. A mental outcome can be the perception, easily assumed by street art audiences, of a unitary museum collection encompassing artworks scattered in far-away places across our global village. An excellent

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example is the Street Museum of Art (SMA) founded in New York in 2011, which actively uses the Internet as a tool for global outreach by spreading its exhibitions and projects. It has no headquarters, but it is not a cybermuseum evoking virtual universes, as it studies and disseminates actual murals in Manhattan or other urban locations worldwide, providing in situ didactic identification labels and further information by means of QR codes. In fact, promenading in the East End of London, I have found by chance a street intervention by a famous artist called Space Invader with an interpretative sign besides, featuring the colourful logo of the SMA. By offering this kind of information all over the world, thanks to the selfless collaboration of post-graffiti enthusiasts, plus the cultural tasks carried out through the SMA website, their claim for the name ‘museum’ seems thus quite justified.35 Taking another step ahead, this argument is being used by such municipalities as Barcelona to denote a virtual museum of public art – an interactive website devoted to all sorts of art in public areas throughout the city, which offers a very accomplished online catalogue as well as didactic itineraries (Remesar, 2011). Thus, the modern utopia of a wall-free museum seems now to be gaining another dimension, thanks to new technological interfaces connecting public art anywhere with all sorts of publics surfing the Internet. Moreover, the latest developments in information and communication technology are also marking in many other ways the interrelation between museums and cities with public art, as will be argued in the culmination of the following chapter devoted to the ongoing dilemmas since postmodernity, reconfiguring a new leading role for public art interventions as eye-catching urban connectors with museum headquarters – or vice versa.

Notes 1 A quaint ensemble of typical Nordic churches and houses gathered in the environs of the royal summer residence in Bygdøy peninsula, near Christiania – modern Oslo – on the initiative of Chamberlain Christian Holst, who had some historical buildings relocated there and replicas of others built. They were opened to the public in 1882 (Maure, 1993). 2 Skansen – sconce – opened to the public in 1891 in the outskirts of Stockholm on a hill on Djurgården island under the initiative of Hazelius, a great enthusiast of tableaux vivants. He hired extras clad in typical costumes who not only ‘acted’ inside the buildings but also on the streets or paths and fields, where they enacted the traditional way of life and work, at times accompanied by farm animals. They performed folk music and dances too, drawing the admiration of the many visitors who to date continue to flock there. This enactment is the proto-model most usually referred to by historians of ethnological museums, though archaeologists like to allude first to the popular success of the reconstruction of the Roman camp of Salzburg, set up in 1897 by Emperor William II, who inaugurated it three years later, accompanied by extras attired as Roman legionaries and German warriors and other performances (Hernández, 2010: 254). 3 A broad-minded panorama on the historical evolution of these recreations has been traced, on the one hand, by Edward N. Kaufman from the perspective of

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architectural history (Kaufman, 1989) and, on the other hand, by antrhopolgist Xavier Roigé who, in spite of their perennial popular success, considers them already outdated (Roigé, 2007). He appropriately includes in his account the Pueblo Español, built on the hill of Montjuich in Barcelona on the occasion of the exhibition of 1929. Following its success another ensemble with the same name was built between 1965 and 1967 by Fernando Chueca-Goitia on a promontory near Palma de Mallorca’s historical city centre. The time was ripe for such initiatives as the Association of European Open Air Museums, founded in 1966. That same year started the life of Westville, which continues to attract many nostalgic tourists to Virginia, like its counterpars in Bromsgrove or Chichester (England) established in 1967. The same idyllic yearn could apply to the Museum Hakubutsukan Meiji-Mura of Inuyama (Japan) and to the Museum of Chinese Regional Architecture in Guilin or to the Museum of Traditional Architecture of Nigeria in Jos, as is also the case of Pueblito Paisa re-enacted in 1976 on the top of Cerro Nutibara on the outskirts of Medellin (Colombia). A critical expert has described such nostalgic relocations out of their original setting as ‘cemeteries of peasant houses’ (Huwyler, 1992). In 1963 Karl Prantl was granted the German Critics’ Award for the international repercussions of his annual symposium of sculptors in St. Margarethen, especially in such countries as Germany, the United States, Japan, Romania and Israel. Another ‘apostle’ of this spiritual movement was Janez Lenassi, who implemented this ideal in Slovenia in 1961, starting the symposium Forma Viva in Portoroz. Robert Rousil imported the idea into Canada in 1964. Other similar symposia took place in France – for example, in 1967 in Grenoble (Hartmann & Pokorny, 1988). It sounds strange to talk about a ‘site museum’, as evidently all museums are located on one particular site! The creator of this novelty was Frank Atkinson, the director of Bowes Museum in Durham. A fervent admirer of Scandinavian open air museums, he resolved to modernize this model when founding the Northern England Regional Open Air Museum, no longer devoted exclusively to farming rural life but also to the social history of this industrial and mining region. He was also seeking to provide a global experience of immersion into the past, recreating a miners’ village, the main street of a typical provincial town and other attractions in a former farm, Beamish, but with more scientific rigour, avoiding replicas: already existing architecture structures were museumized in situ, while other historical buildings within the region were relocated there, brick by brick, as well as machinery, vehicles and household objects, always availing of original elements (Johnson & Barry, 1990; Rentzhog, 2007: 236–287). Yet some museum collections of contemporary art have lately been inserted as an additional attraction of social history open air museums – for example, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, which now offers as part of its attractions the Open Air Museum of Steel Sculpture in Coalbrookdale (Shropshire). A mât, or mast, would often be erected in the focal centre of the ecomuseum as a tribute to primitive totems and also as art elements sometimes commissioned to be sculpted by renowned artists. But just that was the extent of the limited relationship with contemporary artists, save for a few rare exceptions. Amongst them, a tall wooden mast created by French sculptor Terence Claude Baldelli, clearly redolent of the stereotypical mât pinpointing the epicentre of some ecomuseums. La Castellana is nothing but the urban extension of Paseo del Prado and Paseo de Recoletos; the latter was then home to a national museum featuring nineteenthand early twentieth-century art. To spread that cultural axis further north with a modern abstract sculpture was then an appropriate complement, symbolically

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keeping distance from the historic masters worshipped down the street, both in the old Museo de Arte Contemporáneo and in the Prado, the southern pole of this expanding art district. That name came later and is used rather as an advertising ploy, not as the official name, though it is the title of the most comprehensive monograph on that collection (Lanzmann, 1994). Such as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Barcelona inaugurated in 1960 thanks to works provided by many Catalan artists and from the rest of Spain, or the Museo Municipal de Arte Actual of Ayllón (Segovia) created in 1965 also with artworks donated by their authors, as well as the Museo Goya in Fuendetodos (Zaragoza), where paintings donated by admirers of the master have been on display since 1968 or above all the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Villafamés (Castellón), founded in 1970 and inaugurated two years later with works contributed by their creators. In 1999 La petite faucille was vandalized by right-wing radicals (Arroyo, 2015). In the summer of 1972, within the festival Encuentros de Pamplona, a controversial Show of Contemporary Basque Art had been organized at the Museo de Navarra, from where Chillida had his sculpture removed for political reasons and several artists expressed vigorous protests against censorship (for a broader political context and bibliographical references, see Lorente, 2016b). For instance, the International Sculpture Exhibition in the Street, organized in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in December of 1973 by the Canary Islands Architects’ Association in collaboration with the city hall, the island council and the Savings Bank of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Many of the artists represented had also taken part in the museum of la Castellana, including, of course, Sempere and his colleagues and other sculptors widely known for their opposition to Franco; as the promoter of the event, art critic Eduardo Westerdahl did notoriously hold opposing ideals. There were, however, differences in terms of a higher number of sculptures, forty-six, and the presence of many foreign artists – including Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, Marino Marini and Arnaldo Pomodoro – and most notably the fact that this was a temporary event scattered in streets, parks and squares around the city. Many of the artworks eventually remained there, but hardly no information is given in situ. This sculpture by Chillida has repeatedly been the chosen stage for rallies of artists, political groups, ecologists, associations and, above all, journalists – a professional lobby which turned it into a touchstone of public debate in the late Franco period and chose it as a meeting point to protest against terrorist threats or other issues. The municipal website has also become involved in the promotion of this museum with a section dedicated to it (www.munimadrid.es/museoairelibre) providing basically the contents of the guide published in 1995 by the city hall of Madrid. It is not an independent entity, having been managed by Museo Municipal de Historia de Madrid since 1984. New labels were placed that year with more details which included the name of the artist, title and year as well as information boards. Detailed information about the collection and every singular work is provided by the municipal website (www.madrid.es). What matters here is that passers-by can enjoy remarkable artworks and museum services – though no public toilets are available – plus the benefits of public art, open twenty-four hours a day all year round. Now there are new information panels in situ, with a Braille version, in which the name of the museum no longer appears but the title ‘Conjunto escultórico de la Castellana’ – Sculptural Ensemble of La Castellana. A vast international list of instances can be found in the section ‘Parks & Gardens’ of the membership directory of the international organization created in 1960 in the United States of America called International Sculpture Centre (www.sculpture.org/). Since 2004, the website of its European equivalent, the international association

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Sculpture Network, based in Berlin, offers a similar list significantly titled ‘Museum, Skulpturenpark’ (www.sculpture-network.org). Similarly, many instances of entitled museums are offered in an excellent printed European guide (Blázquez, 2006). Such as Yorkshire Sculpture Park, founded in 1977, which continues to carefully avoid using the designation ‘museum’, though it is registered in the official directories of museums in the United Kingdom and it is more than a mere park of sculptures, as its facilities, initially the edifices and campus of Bretton Hall College, include now buildings for the reception of visitors, exhibitions, a shop and restaurant, and it has even been studied in prestigious museology books (MacLeod, 2012). Another world-famous museum usually called sculpture park is the Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim in Brazil, founded by mining magnate Bernardo Paz and designed by landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx; it is a complex of buildings and art blending with nature, which opened to the public in 2006. An excellent example is also the NMAC Foundation, in the meadows of Montenmedio in Vejer de la Frontera (Cádiz), though it has started to publicize itself as Museo de Arte y Naturaleza, having been a member of the ICOM since 2008. The origin of the open air museum at the University of Liege on the campus of Sart Tilman – featuring now more than one hundred pieces – goes back to the first urbanization projects of that estate in the sixties, when the first sculptural interventions were installed there (Duchesne, 1999). But instead of the name ‘museum’ in the French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, the designation Jardin de Sculptures was chosen for its open air collection of sculptures founded in 1988, perhaps because it was created next to the garden of medicinal plants or for other cultural influences. Although originally founded by a socialist mayor, even the open air sculpture museum of Antwerp became increasingly closer to the cultural models coming from the United States: extensively renovated and expanded in 1993, when the city was the European Capital of Culture, it is often referred to in English guides as the Middelheim Sculpture Park. Providencia is a commune on the outskirts of the Chilean capital. This district, which owes its name to a nineteenth-century convent located outside the city, became a residential area for the upper classes in the twentieth century. Landscapist Jorge Oyarzún and architect German Bannen were commissioned to design an ambitious park, inaugurated in 1986. Only one art installation adorned it then: the large red stone sculpture by Marta Colvin titled ‘Pachamama’ – Mother Land, in Quechuan. Yet on the initiative of artists and municipal officials through a combination of private and public patronage, an ambitious collection has been constituted little by little. It was accepted as a member of the ICOM in 2008, and a recent book refers to it as ‘the first instance of this kind in South America’ (Fuentes Wendling & Retamal, 2008). Moscow’s ПАРК ИСКУССТВ МУЗЕОН is now a very popular attraction, partly because of its location in a lively art district next to the gallery Tretyakov and the Central House of Artists but also because it is a favourite destination for nostalgic lovers of Soviet past. It was originally built as a Museum of Totalitarianism, where the emphatic statues formerly watching over passers-by were now degraded, had no high pedestals, were lying on the floor and had been daubed with graffiti (Gamboni, 2013: 77). The Szoborpark Múzeum, however, is on the outskirts of Budapest, in a park in the proletarian district of Tétény, whose installation and peripheral fence continue to be provisional and unfinished due to the lack of interest from the authorities and residents, as just a few foreign artists visit this memorial site (Losonczy, 1999). Once a town claims to have an open air museum, rivalling towns also bring that name into play, as is the case of the Museo di Scultura all’Aperto of Buddusò (Sardinia), born out of the international sculpture symposia held there since 1984 and rivalling the museum of nearby Ozieri, inaugurated ten years later. In

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fact, given the lack of administrative and staff structure, few such Italian examples would be admitted by ICOM as museums proper. But what matters here is that they are called so, as can be checked in www.parchidartecontemporanea.it/ category/museo-aperto (retrieved on 10 July 2017). The idea of setting up a sculpture museum in the walls of Toledo, between Puerta de la Bisagra and Puerta del Cambrón, was the work of the Cultural Association Tolmo. In 1980 they contributed seven hundred thousand pesetas for this project. The collection started with a concrete sculpture by Eduardo Chillida, Lugar de Encuentros V, from the same series as that in Museo de la Castellana. But it all came to a halt, and Chillida’s sculpture, placed in Plaza Alfonso VI, suffered graffiti from extreme right-wing groups and remained systematically hidden behind cars illegally parked around it until it was decided to remove it in 2006. In 1984 Elche (Alicante) created, between the Camino de la Estación and Avenida de la Libertad, a Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre, whose collection was inaugurated with a sculpture by Pablo Serrano, Homenaje a Joaquín Rodrigo, given by the author and his wife, Juana Francés. The second acquisition, Homenaje a la Dama de Elche by Arcadio Blasco, did not arrive until 1989. The project eventually fell through, but since 2001 the Espai d’Art in a nearby park integrates those two sculptures plus other acquisitions. The short-lived project of an open air sculpture museum in Buñol (Valencia) came about in 1985 after an exhibition held in the castle by sculptor Ramón de Soto, who persuaded other artists to donate their artworks, permanently installed in this town. In 1988 the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia began a museum collection of open air sculptures prompted by the painter and sculptor Nassio Bayarri who, thanks to the collaboration of his artist friends, managed to put together artworks under very reasonable economic terms. University authorities continued to make acquisitions with varying budgets, but this collection spread around the enormous campus – Els Taronjers – is not perceived as a museum, nor has it ever been called as such. Placing these contemporary sculptures in the streets of Huelva brought about criticism from those who thought they clashed with the look of the historical city centre and supposedly hampered the traditional route of Catholic Easter parades. Some of them were removed – especially the most valuable ones, such as Pablo Serrano’s – and many were vandalized or became weather-beaten. After a restoration campaign finished in 2006, they had to be relocated to more secure locations. At the time of this writing, only the Museo de Arte Público in Madrid is registered within the Directorio de Museos y Colecciones de España. Local authorities of medium-sized towns simply did not bother to include them in the register kept by regional culture or heritage offices and presented to the Ministry for Culture, whose website keeps an updated list at www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-mecd/areascultura/museos/directorio-de-museos-y-colecciones-de-espana.html (retrieved on 16 May 2017). Luis Arencibia had already persuaded the Council of Leganés in 1985 to start purchasing monumental sculptures, scattered around streets or squares. From 1995 onwards he was in a position to promote much more of these acquisitions as head of the art and exhibitions department of the municipality, also counting on the support of private sponsors. At the beginning of the millennium, agreements were reached with the Ministry for Culture to receive sculptures from the former Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo (MEAC). The corporation of Leganés paid for the transport, restoration and installation of around fifty highly valuable artworks. The park where they are displayed was fenced in, and it was officially inaugurated under the presidency of the minister for culture, Carmen Calvo, and the mayor, José Luis Pérez Ráez, in 2005. Each piece has a carefully

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detailed label, and brochures are freely handed out by the caretakers and security guards of the Municipal Centre Las Dehesillas. Maintenance services are also available as well as an educational centre. This, therefore, can be considered a museum proper, and it is a member of ICOM duly recorded in the registry of museums of Madrid and the directory of the Ministry of Culture under the name Museo de Escultura de Leganés. Such as the park of Salinas de Arte Contemporáneo (SAC) of Fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón in Medina del Campo (Valladolid), Cala Ratjada of Bartolomé March in Capdepera (Mallorca), Parc Art in Cassà de la Selva (Gerona), ‘Arenatzarte’ in Güeñes (Guipúzcoa) and, above all, Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo of Fundación NMAC in Vejer de la Frontera (Cádiz). As the artists more enthusiastic of open air symposiums tend to repeat their presence in diverse contests, in order to avoid that the resulting collections could become too similar, some localities already specify a particular argument. This is the case of the municipality of Ostellato (province of Ferrara) where, since 1998, summer symposiums have been organized for outdoor sculpture on the common theme of the sky, creating a distinctive feature that even manifests itself in the name of the museum, CielOstellato. Or the open air museum created in 2005 by the town of Étroubles (Val d’Aosta), near the Franco-Swiss border, whose sculptures are all about the theme of travels. This thematic unit facilitates the explanations of the ensemble, through brochures or catalogues, other pedagogical activities, workshops and so on. For more information, see their website: http://streetartmuseumamsterdam.com (with an archive of news and other informations). Their website is very informative: www.museumofpublicart.org. See their website: www.streetmuseumofart.org (starting with a catchy motto: ‘Redefining what it means to be a public art museum’).

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Dialectics of museums/public art articulation at the turn of the millennium

The ideals of modernity were never totally extinguished. They were instead gradually eclipsed in the 1970s by other urban and art archetypes not always easily conjoined. Predilection for monumental taste set henceforward a trend in sculpture and architecture which, according to Javier Maderuelo, could have met a new paragon of museography in the extension of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio. It was conceived by Claes Oldenburg for the garden where his sculpture Giant Three-Way Plug had stood since 1970. The famous Pop artist suggested replacing that sculpture with an electric plug-shaped building. Instead, his monumental plug was moved a few metres to make room for the new structure designed by architect Robert Venturi, completed in 1977. That was a frustrated opportunity, after which bigger cities would become the main testing ground for postmodern interrelation tendencies between museums and the surrounding architectural/sculptural heritage (Maderuelo, 2008: 318–325). The Pompidou Centre in Paris constituted a turning point in this matter – as in so many others. Transgressor architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers broke away from modern paradigms: instead of creating a museum isolated from the urban bustle, bucolically wrapped in an entourage of gardens and sculptures, they chose to place their building to one side of the available site to make more room for a vast pedestrian square. They originally planned to leave as much space as possible for city life and people: in their initial design, the building was to stand on sturdy pilotis just like the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, though this idea was rejected because of safety concerns. Nor were they allowed to create a ‘talking facade’ – inspired by the Spanish pavilion at the International Exhibition of 1937 – to attract people’s attention with large bills and changing photographs and illuminated signs with mottos and information. The outcome was spectacularly original. When it was inaugurated in 1977, the cobbled surface of the Plateau Beaubourg resembled an amphitheatre on a descending slope where hippies, musicians, dancers and street jugglers or other artistes de la rue performed. But the show continued inside on the ground floor, freely accessible. Significantly called the forum, it was monumentally adorned with public artworks, such as Vasarely’s kinetic

166 Museums taken to the streets portrait of Georges Pompidou or Jean Tinguely’s Crocodome: one of the hefty vents originally designed for the square and later discarded was reused by that prominent artist of the nouveau réalisme to create a playful interactive piece enjoyed by children at large. As a complement, in 1983 the Paris city hall commissioned from Tinguely and his partner, Niki de SaintPhalle, the Stravinsky fountain, an unceremonious, colourful, dynamic and ‘musical’ artwork for the piazza on the southern side of the building. The underground part of this area is occupied by one of the many founding institutions of the Pompidou Centre, the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (Zask, 2013: 112–113, 161–162). Today such fascinating museum and urban experiments, which marked the beginning of an era and resulted in countless imitations and massive bibliography, continues to be awe-inspiring. Yet despite the unquestionable pull of the ‘Beaubourg effect’, few scholars would consider it an emerging prototype of postmodern museums; on the contrary, some called it ‘antimuseum’.1 Judged from the vantage of our present perspective, this case rather seems to have marked the end of an era, though its location in the historical city core and its use as symbolic epicentre of public life subsequently opened the way for museums and contemporary art to play a leading role in the processes of urban regeneration. Yet Beaubourg failed to become a new museological paradigm, though it would be quite hard to determine what museum models were marking new standards at the turn of the millennium. Prevalent categories of public art in this period were not clear-cut either; we have yet to find out whether the test of time will sanction the dialectic division formulated by an influential North American scholar (Mitchell, 1992: 3): his binary confrontation, opposing the blooming of new critical art against the continuity of monumental sculptures in the public sphere has been adopted in this chapter but adding a third section to that original scheme, thus applying Hegel’s dialectics of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The starting point would entail a critical attitude, today generally assumed not only in thinking and in art but also in many more aspects of life. The other side of the coin, a return to monumental figuration, would generally be favoured by populist postmodern cultural policies whose investments in museums and/or public art are dictated by publicity returns deriving from the image they cast. Beyond this dichotomy, some instances do exist of experimental options interrelating museums with public art and urban planning in our mercantilist society.

7.1 Conceptual ‘antimonuments’ and institutional critique within museum environments Although the return to monumental sculptures had been led by minimalist North American sculptors and taken to its peak by the pioneers of land art, some of these North American artists did also experiment – not uncontroversially – by inserting sculptures in the city centre, even in European cities, such as Münster or Kassel, where they successfully took part in art

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contests and often had their creations placed in areas surrounding a museum or a cultural institution. This is the case, for instance, of Walter De Maria in the VI Documenta of 1977. His renowned Vertical Earth Kilometre, a one-kilometre long metal rod inserted into the ground in the middle of a square in front of the Museum Fridericianum, benefited from such privileged location which unquestionably added to its popularity, even though all that can be seen from the outside is its flat golden circular top (Ipsen, 1993: 325–339). Beyond a taste for conceptual paradoxes, it may not be interpreted as a frontal challenge to art’s official system, as the project was funded by the Dia Art Foundation. Yet placing this antimonument in front of a museum indubitably incorporated an element of challenge, which has to be understood in the intellectual context of the growing influence of George Dickie’s Institutional Theory of Art. Rosalind Krauss had already pointed out that modern sculpture in the expanded field, because of is defiant character, sometimes transcended the traditional ideological factors of institutional art; but these official art instances soon became the favourite target of the most provocative artists. A new art genre arose peculiarly termed institutional critique: a deceptive name as it seems to convey that criticism comes from an institution. Quite the contrary, the term refers to artists who criticize institutional policies, often by means of installations commissioned by museums and exhibition centres (Wall, 2006). Paradoxically enough, this type of art which questions institutions in their own premises and using their own means inevitably ends up being institutionalized.2 It is worth referring here to a pair of well-known pioneering instances, both of them the work of Conceptual artist Michael Asher. When he was invited by the Art Institute of Chicago to take part in an exhibition of American art in the summer of 1979, he presented a project which consisted of having the monument of George Washington transferred from the entrance steps to a room indoors devoted to French eighteenth-century art. The statue seemingly fitted perfectly this historical and aesthetic context due to evident political ties between the leaders of the American Revolution and the French Republic: in fact, the most famous portrait of the first president of the United States was commissioned from French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, who travelled to Virginia with this purpose. The outcome was a majestic marble sculpture completed by 1788. But that original monument is placed at the Capitol in Virginia, while this version in Chicago is one of many bronze copies dating from 1917. For that reason, the museum authorities considered it inappropriate to keep the statue inside that room, and after the show it was returned to its original location outdoors. Yet the imprint of doubt remained in the memory of the staff and of some visitors beyond the two-month long installation used by the artist to question what type of art should be displayed inside or outside a museum. This is one of Thomas Crow’s favourite instances: this art historian, who analyzes intersections between higher and lower culture from the Enlightenment onwards, has also eloquently commented on another initiative by the same artist in the Los

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Angeles County Museum of Art in 1981, an antithesis of the evasive ‘pastoral’ aesthetics enveloping modern institutional art. Firstly, Asher had a sign placed prohibiting loose dogs on the path, linking the museum to the B. B. Cantor Sculpture Garden and the adjacent lake. Secondly, he put an arcane ‘information panel’ at the entrance to the institution with an image from the adventure film The Kentuckian, starring and directed by Burt Lancaster, who had donated to the museum the painting of the same name by Thomas Hart Benton where the actor was portrayed as a settler during the conquest of American territory. The room where the heroic portrait was displayed was hence the third spot chosen by the conceptual artist from California to place another restricted access sign (Crow, 1996: 141–143, 190–194). These actions and their meanings both in Chicago and in Los Angeles may have gone unnoticed by many visitors but are commemorated in retrospect as antecedents of further art initiatives questioning the boundaries between the interior and exterior of museums.3 However, if we were to pinpoint an undying historical milestone in radically controversial contemporary public art initiatives nearby museums, we should unquestionably look at Joseph Beuys in Kassel’s provocative intervention in the VII Documenta of 1982. The artist had a lorry full of basalt stone blocks unloaded in the square in front of the Museum Fridericianum, declaring that the blocks could only be taken from there to other streets provided that an oak tree was planted wherever each and everyone of the seven thousand stone blocks was transferred to. That is exactly what occurred, though these blocks of basalt were viewed as rather ugly by many citizens of Kassel and became a poignant memorial when a motorcyclist died after colliding with one of them. But thanks to the support of the social-democrat mayor and to the funding of the North American Dia Art Foundation, the last tree/ stone pair was planted in the inauguration ceremony of the VIII Documenta in 1987, completing the monumental installation titled 7,000 Oak-Trees. Beuys did not live to see this, but it was a posthumous triumph over media polemists and reluctant citizens. These collective scruples did not concern his supporters who wished to export this controversial experiment on ‘social sculpture’ to other cities around the world. In particular, one version was installed the following year on the pavement in front of the Dia Art Foundation in Manhattan, a typical instance of institutional critique promoted by the institution itself.4 No conflict arose at these other locations, and in time the embers of the inflammatory controversy died out in Kassel: Beuys’s installation is hardly noticed by many visitors to the Museum Fridericianum. As could not be otherwise, this precedent had a lasting effect on interrelations between public art and museums in Germany. Soon after Beuys began his rebellious intervention in Kassel, the Kunstmuseum in Bochum was renovated and expanded. It had been formerly surrounded by green gardens adorned with a few sculptures, particularly a 1968 granite version of a Constructivist piece created by Max Bill in 1937. A drastic change ensued. The new entrance was paved and adorned with the ‘relics’ in concrete of a performance presented by Wolf Vostell in June 1972 during the

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‘art week’ held amidst the media turmoil of the Munich Olympic Games. With the money from his commission, Vostell had bought a counter from a local butcher containing stale bread and some money. He had it covered up with concrete, a protest against the ‘petrification’ of consumerist society as opposed to the workers’ way of life, claiming that their hard struggle to survive was much more praiseworthy than the record beating pursuit of athletes. In 1982, next to this work in concrete, Czech artist and philosopher Jiri Hilmar created a pavement intervention titled Sculpture du Sol, consisting of a bronze rail inlaid on the floor of the museum steps and ending up as a circle to make visitors aware of the tension between urban life and the natural substratum – a Zen-like approach complemented by the same artist eighteen years later at the back of the museum with a work titled Nebenfluss using large plant pots. In 1986, on the occasion of the inauguration of the new premises of the museums Wallraff-Richard and Ludwig next to the cathedral in Cologne, Israeli sculptor and landscape architect Dani Karavan was commissioned to design the public space to the north-east over the underground concert hall: the bustling pedestrian area known as Ma’a lot, which leads to the central railway station. To underline this, he installed a train track across the entire area guiding visitors from the museum to the river and to a granite obelisk located on a vantage point (Figure 7.1): this Minimalist sculpture is the

Figure 7.1 Environment by Dani Karavan beside the Ludwig Museum in Cologne (Photo: JPL)

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most conspicuous element of the artistic environs – though trees are also an integral part thereof – complemented by an abstract sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi placed on a fountain where children usually play.5 It has also been metaphorically interpreted as the historical line linking again – or not, as the train track does not go all the way into the museum – present culture to the discontinuous Jewish presence in Cologne’s historical centre, once home to a Jewish quarter, whose only remaining monumental memorial is a stone plaque dating from the thirteenth century, known as the Judenprivileg, which forbids any disturbance of the Jewish community and can still be seen to this day on the northern facade of the cathedral. Another project by sculptor Ansgar Nierhoff for the same urban area in Cologne consisted of just six iron rings, and he was immediately able to develop the idea in Saarbrücken, installing in 1987 a row of six industrial pieces of metal works in the square next to the new wing of the Saarland Museum (Nierhoff, 1990: 237), complementing its outdoor collection of sculptures presided over since 1984 by an intriguing monumental knot by the couple Matschinsky-Denninbghoff. Then a different couple of artists, Anne and Patrick Poirier, produced their enigmatic retort in 1988, with a wink to the Italian Trasvanguardia, for the garden in front of the Luigi Pecci Centre of Contemporary Art in Prato, alluding at the same time to modern metal industries and to classical art with a shiny steel column of monumental size but shattered into slices like a ruin, yet ironically titled Exegi momumento aere perennius (‘I have built a monument more durable than bronze’, a quote from Horace’s Ode 3). A comparable instance can be found by the Musée d’Art Moderne of Villeneuve d’Asq, a former industrial city in the north-west of France, where a prominent position is given in its sculpture garden to a monumental metal work commissioned in 1992 from Richard Deacon, interpreted as an abstract ‘poetic metaphor of the industrial sphere’ (Fleck, 1996: 56–57). All over the world, Conceptualism or Minimalism became the tendency in this type of context to the extent that the intricate Brutalist sculpture William Tarr had been meticulously working on for the entrance of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, whose final version he produced in 1989 with the title Gates of the Six Million – an allusion to the number of Jews exterminated by Nazis – or Gates of Hell – as it was inspired by Rodin – got relegated when the museum was inaugurated in 1993. Instead, the architect and the authorities chose to place at the entrance a steel plate by Richard Serra, Gravity, and an installation by Joel Shapiro, Loss and Regeneration, consisting of two bronze pieces respectively evoking the geometrical abstraction of a tree and a house. Discrepancies did exist in cases when politicians or public opinion considered that, given the large sums spent and the prestige attached to an artwork placed in such a privileged position, the result seemed rather inconspicuous. When in 1996 Thomas Heatherwick won the art contest to remodel the central square facing the Laing Art Gallery of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, his project was saluted

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with unanimous enthusiasm. He proposed a subtle carpet of blue paving tiles with ingeniously placed benches and aesthetically designed lights but demarcated with bronze edges, which the young artist employed to highlight the abandoned appearance of the surrounding urban area. However, Blue Carpet was not inaugurated until 2001 due to the difficulty to produce a pavement of 22,500 tiles made from resin and recycled glass bottles, which have required many repairs due to wear and accidents, plus a costly restoration in 2006 (Paterson, 2012). All these expenses might be more easily assumed if instead of such a low-profile work of faded colour – more grey than blue – it had been instead a spectacular artistic icon of the city. Thus, contrary opinions have been multiplying, and there have been debates considering its removal. In other instances, conflicts posed by the installation of artworks at museums’ doors have been compounded by controversies on who is competent in such public areas. The authorities involved may clash or may be contested by the artists or their heirs, by the architect who designed the museum building, by museum officials and, of course, by citizens. How far can the power of each of them reach when diverging opinions are not easily reconciled? This issue came about in Barcelona regarding the Museu d’Art Contemporani (MACBA), a public gallery most supportive to Conceptual art, though this risky choice did not win the initial power struggle that arose within the institution. Richard Meier’s building was inaugurated in 1995 in the heart of the district formerly known as Barrio Chino. The following year, the then director invited several international contemporary artists to put forward proposals to engage in a ‘critical dialogue’.6 The project of Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata typically consisted of one of his cluttered board installations he often builds for people to walk around; in this case he proposed a raised footbridge that would link the building to the wall separating the museum area from neighbouring dwellings, thus placing a vantage point over the poorest houses so that visitors could catch a glimpse of the extremely deprived surrounding social context. But what would the neighbours have felt being constantly exposed to the strange presence of refined patrons of this contemporary art museum who would take turns observing them as birdwatchers in a belvedere? Neither this nor any of the other fourteen transgressive projects must have seemed feasible to the museum board, who opted for a more conservative choice in 1998. Next to the main entrance, in the new Plaza de los Ángeles, Jorge Oteiza’s work La ola – The Wave – was placed: an enlarged version – thirty-five hundred kilos in weight, made of aluminium – of a small abstract bronze sculpture he had created back in 1957. As for the newly created square at the back of the building, Eduardo Chillida was engaged. Curiously enough, two historically renowned Basques who may have been perceived by the museum board generationally closer to them than the Catalan or foreign artists the director had invited. The emulation effect was unquestionably far-reaching: plenty of top museums worldwide

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had works by Chillida installed outside – for instance, the Musée Olympique of Lausanne or the Neue Nationalgalerie of Berlin – boasting his celebrated sculpture Gudari (1975) in front of its facade. In Spain, monumental pieces by Chillida flanked the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Compostela and others. Yet on this occasion, he was not commissioned to create a sculpture but a mural made of reinforced concrete and copper oxide to decorate the wall separating the museum area from neighbouring blocks of flats: not the entire wall but a 15.55-metre x 5.9-metre surface in the most gentrified corner, as if trying to attract attention or photographers to that angle, leaving aside the urban ugliness which pervaded beyond it.7 Whether Chillida’s mural is an attempt at misleading us or it contributes to embellishing its setting is up to individual judgement, but it is about time this museum of contemporary art – in line with its consistent commitment inside the building – did install outside Conceptual and critical artworks, befitting its present strategy to integrate the culture of Barrio del Raval – Barcelona’s trendiest art district, including the adjacent Centro de Cultura Contemporánea – particularly after the expansion of the museum onto the other side of the square, at the Convent dels Angels, currently also part of the MACBA. They can take the cue from Bilbao’s Museum of Fine Arts, surrounded by sculptures of various styles and periods complemented in 2001 by Juan Luis Moraza’s striking installation in the green area between the museum and a busy street junction. It consists of a mixture of different streetlamps, beacons and lights which resemble an urban jungle in daylight while at night pay tribute to its poetic title, Fanal: Jardín de delicias, pointing out the concentration of cultural objects of a great variety of styles and periods both within art institutions and in outdoor street furniture. It constitutes the immediate precedent of Chris Burden’s renowned intervention to connect the facade of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to the neighbouring boulevard. His 2007 Urban Light, however, consists of a plantation of over two hundred geometrically aligned lampposts. Loyal to its historical commitment with conceptualism, this museum redoubled its bid from 2010 onwards with another forest, this time made up of real trees, at its doorstep. Primal Palm Garden was devised by artist Robert Irwin and landscape architect Paul Comstock. The geometrical architecture of the museum building also contrasts with the presence of an artwork consisting of a massive 240-ton rock perched on top of a moat used as public access to the building. Its author, Michael Heizer, refuses to make any comments beyond the title, Levitated Mass, though the institution strives to provide its audience with complementary information.8 All pieces of their collection displayed in the open air – including famous statues by Rodin – have museum interpretation in situ (Figure 7.2) and are described on the museum website. This is an assumed commitment invariably implemented by US museums as part of their raison d’être which ought to be echoed elsewhere both for temporary art shows and for permanent exhibitions in public spaces, all the

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Figure 7.2 Facade of the Los Angeles County Museum featuring an outdoor collection with interpretative panels (Photo: Ana Revilla)

more when dealing with Conceptual art. Unlike the common practice in Germany, where Joseph Beuys’s disinclination to any form of interpretation continues to exert hefty influence – with remarkable exceptions – French institutions seem keener on providing information in situ for public artworks, including Conceptual installations which continue to be the favourite choice of many museums for their outdoor collections, sometimes combined with other trends. In Lyon’s Musée d’Art Contemporain, visitors are received by all sorts of curious artworks, starting with a bent van, created by Erwin Wurm in 2007, permanently parked by its main entrance. Conceptual art is also a strong point at the Musée d’Art Contemporain (MAC) of Marseilles, always surrounded by controversial examples, sometimes as extravagant as the graffiti painting commissioned to decorate the museum facade years ago with an antimuseum slogan. Its outdoor premises are now permanently displaying rather abstruse artworks – but all of them appropriately identified and explained by the museum – mostly in the rear sculpture garden, beginning with a ‘barricade’ by Mona Hatoum made out of sacks of soil in which grass grows, whereas others confront us by the main entrance, such as the light box sign created in 2009 by visual poet Julien Blaine warning visitors: ‘Il est encore temps de rebrousser nimehc’ (You are still in time to retrace your steps – the last word written backwards) (Figure 7.3). Should

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Figure 7.3 Main entrance to the Marseilles Museum of Contemporary Art, with some Conceptual artworks (Photo: JPL)

you ignore this notice and make for the entrance, be careful not to step on a brown cast iron sculpture of expansive scatological shape signed by Marseillais artist César, the popular enfant terrible of new realism in France. Another of his artworks also stands in a nearby roundabout representing an enlarged version of his thumb: Le Pouce Géant, a generally well-liked piece, unlike the ill-fated conceptual installation created by Daniel Buren in the same neighbourhood which was dismantled with the author’s agreement.9 Seldom is an artist willing to withdraw one of his creations. At times, however, it is the artist’s own disapproval which challenges the presence of a conceptual artwork in the public space near a museum. Nobody complained when the monumental sculpture of a 3.5-metre high flowerpot, the work of Jean-Pierre Raynaud, was erected on a high dais in front of the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1998. Whereas white ceramic is commonly perceived as the artist’s hallmark, this Pot doré was made of polyester gilded in gold leaf. It had been commissioned by the jeweller Cartier, who had initially had this ‘jewel’ installed in the sculpture park of the Cartier Foundation in Jouy-enJosas, from 1985 to 1993. But it did not make so much sense to place this golden idol as a monument in bohemian Plateau Beaubourg, where it was transferred on loan from the Cartier Foundation after it had been donated to the State in 1999 and incorporated into the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne (MNAM). Eventually, at Raynaud’s own request, the gigantic

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golden flowerpot was removed in October 2009 and transferred to the terrace on the top floor of the Pompidou Centre (quite appropriately alongside the extremely exclusive restaurant located there).10 Its place in the square was occupied for six years, since 28 June 2011, by an even larger piece from the MNAM collection: a six-ton massive stabile-mobile by Alexander Calder titled Horizontal, dating from 1974. It was a good choice, as it appropriately suited the building’s architecture and the Stravinsky fountain. But it was not the best, though. There are so many museums featuring Calders outside that it would have been a good occasion to opt for a representative piece of more recent art to be displayed in such a prominent public space. A Pop art monument might have possibly rejuvenated the image of Beaubourg without dissonances with respect to the taste and critical spirit of its time. A good example to be followed could be the Denver Art Museum, whose historical building is visually identified with the red sculpture titled Lao Tzu, created by Abstract Expressionist Mark di Suvero. After the extension designed at the turn of the millennium by Daniel Libeskind, a monumental broom and dustpan were installed, purposely commissioned from Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg. Their sarcastic sense of humour is loaded here with Conceptual criticism as the installation belongs to their series The Dustbin of History – the museum would thus be the dustbin of history. Less caustic are Franck Scurti’s sardonic monumental reinterpretations of everyday items of our consumer society, which already welcome visitors in the lobby of some branché museums, such as the Palais de Tokyo or the MAC/VAL. The latter, whose official name is Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, was inaugurated in 2005 in Vitry-sur-Seine, specializing in contemporary art from the 1950s onwards. It is therefore appropriate for the nearby roundabout to boast a monumental sculpture by Jean Dubuffet, installed by the authorities as an iconic landmark since 1996 – this public artwork is an enlarged version of the chimney sculpture originally designed in 1970 for Villa Falbala, in Périgny-sur-Yerres. But, as a rejoinder, the museum chose a Conceptual installation by Julien Berthier in 2011 to be displayed at the entrance. La Concentration des Services is its eloquent title, which the museum did not take any trouble to explain, neither when it was placed at the back of the building in the garden of sculptures – none of them labelled – nor after its relocation at the street entrance, where passers-by were not aware of the artistic value of this ironic grouping of a bus shelter, taxi rank, traffic light, postbox and so forth. When some of its lights broke down, the MAC/VAL took the installation to storage in December 2015 despite the general indifference of both the local community and the media. Yet their complicity might easily be won had this artwork been explained as a protest against the concentration of services in the heart of Paris to the detriment of public infrastructure in its populous periphery where this single museum of contemporary art stands, in a poor southern banlieue, attempting to provide a distinguished epicentre to a rough, proletarian neighbourhood so lacking in urban networks. If the museum brings pieces of its collection onto the

176 Museums taken to the streets street but fails to interpret them, certain criticisms for cultural snobbery are here well founded: there is something perverse in paying with public funds, among such urban squalor, cutting-edge installations suitable only for a few initiated specialists while likely going unnoticed by the common people. The inevitable comparison that comes to mind is the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, whose entrance also boasts a similar art installation created by Pedro de Mora in the shape of a bus shelter. But it is properly identified and explained in situ, as are most of the other pieces of the collection scattered around the museum, save for the works by Rogelio López Cuenca. This prestigious artist, the Spanish pioneer of institutional critique, had created conceptual signposts commissioned for Seville’s World Fair of 1992: twenty-four of these ‘information boards’, containing enigmatic icons, were then displayed but soon had to be removed because of the risk of misleading visitors. Some of them, however, have been rescued by the CAAC and placed in different locations around the museum with no identification labels. Two of these signposts by López Cuenca are also placed in the piazza created within Jean Nouvel’s extension building of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, where they used to be properly identified and explained with museum labels, which have then been removed11 (Figure 7.4). Consequently, people are left quite puzzled and confused, as the artist had originally intended.

Figure 7.4 Piazza with artworks by the new entrance to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (Photo: JPL)

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But can this actually be the museum’s aim? Should museum curators relinquish their professional task, submitting to the wishes of artists? Such is the debate opened by artworks conceived to baffle the limits of our conceptions. This is the case of some alphanumeric installations of Conceptual art increasingly found outside of any museum, competing with street advertising billboards or publicity posters put out by the institution itself. This is similar to Robert Indiana’s celebrated Pop signs, so popular after the success of his monumental LOVE letters at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. His gigantic number 7 displayed in front of the Portland Museum comes across as rather arcane, and his illuminated sign on top of the Farnsworth Art Museum of Rockland (Maine) may seem misleading as it reads ‘EAT’ while no restaurant is available there. In another sarcastic instance, Julian Opie’s illuminated board stands at the doorstep of the Hugh Lane Gallery of Contemporary Art in Dublin with a museum label stating that the work is titled Suzanne Walking in Leather Skirt and that it is part of a series of art projects distributed around neighbouring streets by the London artist in 2008 on the occasion of the centenary of the institution. It is usually explained that the real-size moving silhouettes led from O’Connell Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, to this one, set at Parnell Square. Yet to the puzzlement of any good observer, the female figure outlined on both sides by LEDs is walking . . . away from the museum (Figure 7.5). These artworks which use moving lights can serve as calls to passers-by indicating that the facility is open – or closed, when the lights are off – as neon signs on pharmacies or shops do. Besides, with or without lights, these artworks mimicking posters or shop signs on museum facades could be celebrated as a postmodern reconquest of exterior walls for ornamental art, after decades of functionalist disornamentation vindicated by the architects of the Modern Movement from the Bauhaus onwards. Quite often, however, such initiatives consist of intricate words or letters which disconcert passers-by, such as the incoherent neon script devised by Vittorio Santoro permanently displayed along a corner of the Centre d’Arts Plastiques Contemporains in Bordeaux since 2008. As no identification label or information notices are presented outdoors, one must visit the museum’s website or other publications to find out that this is part of its art collection, namely the installation Sans titre: Perceptible Erosion. Easier to understand seemed Ugo Rondinone’s colourful signs with topical phrases on the facades of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York or the Garage Museum in Moscow, though they went unnoticed by the passer-by for lack of indication and were taken down. Yet some successful instances of good practices do exist as well, such as the neon sign Blue Klein/Rose Fontana, the work of Maurizio Nannucci on a corner of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, which is not only well explained in situ but also works as an excellent attraction and brilliant public tribute to Ives Klein and Lucio Fontana: a contemporary remake of the portraits and names of great artists who used to adorn the facades of nineteenth-century museums.

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Figure 7.5 Installation by Julian Opie in front of the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin (Photo: JPL)

7.2 Postmodern return of monumental statues as popular attractions Long before the expression ‘cultural branding’ was coined, artworks were regularly used as outdoor icons ever since the first palatial collections opened to the public with famous ancient monuments and classical sculptures by the gates but most particularly throughout the twentieth century,

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as it became common for versions of Rodin’s The Thinker, Moore’s morbid figures and Calder’s stabile-mobiles to be found at the doorstep. Many modern architects outlined these sculptural additions in their projects for new museum buildings; even those restoring historical edifices to be converted into museums strove to place attractive sculptures outside – for example, the great statue of Cangrande I della Scala, a fourteenth-century equestrian portrait, installed by Carlo Scarpa high up on a ledge enhancing the facade of the Museo Civico di Castelvecchio in Verona, where it continues to stand linking indoor museography to outdoor scenery. An ulterior contribution of postmodernism has been the return to the historical concept of ‘monumental’ statues in terms of size but also in terms of their popular iconic and allegorical lure (Maderuelo, 1994; Xibillé, 1995). Especially in public spaces in front of museums, a work of art can gain particular symbolic value. Several sculptures by local artist Mel Chin are displayed on the streets of Houston, the most celebrated being Manila Palm not only because of its attractive iconography but also because of the neighbourhood where this fifteen-metre-high steel and fibre glass palm tree was ‘planted’ in 1978 on a Corten steel pyramid which aptly matches the stainless steel architecture of the Contemporary Arts Museum it belongs to. In turn, it challenges the more traditional look of the Museum of Fine Arts, located opposite, which was then planning the Cullen Sculpture Garden – commissioned to Isamu Noguchi in 1976 and inaugurated in 1986. This opposition between a retiring locus amoenus typically modern and blatant postmodern monumental visibility within the same district did not clash too harshly, as both institutions chose the rear of their buildings to extend outdoors their sculptural displays. More heated arguments erupted elsewhere by the front doors of other institutions, especially regarding artworks subject to disparate opinions and tastes, which are not easily reconciled. Unquestionably, one of the most renowned instances of public conflict with museum officials is the Rocky monument outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1982, on the occasion of the shooting of the film Rocky III, the steps leading to the museum’s entrance were crowned with a statue of Rocky Balboa, a commission given to sculptor Thomas Schomberg. Upon completion of the film, Sylvester Stallone donated the sculpture to the city, assuming it would remain at this location. But museum officials and Philadelphia Art Commission experts considered it a work of limited artistic value, asking the mayor to have it removed. After massive controversy in the media, local authorities had it transferred to the bottom of the steps first and then placed next to a sports centre in the southern outskirts of the city. Eventually, after further changes and subsequent protests, it was returned to the museum grounds in 2006 by popular acclaim, though it now stands in a nearby green area slightly apart from the famed steps. Those stairs leading to the museum are popularly known as the Rocky Steps. Many people climb them running and humming to the catchy tune from the movie and even raise their hands in the air upon reaching the top; not all of them actually venture into

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the museum, whose officials would show more business acumen and social sense if they had the controversial statue displayed inside. It is a favourite photo call for tourists and locals who like to pose with their fists up next to it and then upload their images on Flickr, Instagram or Pinterest. They have made of it one of Philadelphia’s most popular icons. What really matters here is the triumphal historical return to the monumental value of a realistic figure – though in this case a fictional rather than a real hero is portrayed. This perhaps does not apply so clearly to its conciliatory current location as it did when it was visually aligned with the museum facade on the one side and no less than the equestrian monument dedicated to George Washington by the city of Philadelphia on the other. Placing the statue in the epicentre of this pompous neighbourhood seemed significant enough to some and quite inappropriate to others. High culture has yet to assimilate it despite postmodern defence of kitsch art. Controversy originally revolved around the artistic worth of the sculpture and soon spiralled into major media debate when it came to discussing its location. The statue of Rocky virtually turned the public space surrounding the museum into a boxing ring, or to put it in more academic words, an arena of disputing values. As a matter of fact, specialized bibliography consistently refers to it as a case of populist exploitation of public opinion in Reagan’s America showing contempt for the art establishment (Rice, 1992; Knight, 2008: 98–99; Holzman, 2012). The opposite approach claims that people in favour of placing the monument next to the Rocky Steps felt close to the social values supposedly impersonated by this character in the film – a working-class American of immigrant descent who determinedly overcomes all sorts of struggles. Really? Moralizing viewpoints also defend real-size statues made in ceramic by Thomas Schütte for Documenta IX in 1992 as their title, Die Fremden (foreigners, strangers), is usually linked to the arrival in Germany of asylum seekers from the Gulf War and the ensuing conflicts when some of their refuges were burnt by racist radicals. The colourful polychromy of their bizarre clothes and luggage and their hieratical stance and position is redolent of puppets in a shooting gallery. Some continue to stand in situ as a civic attraction or advertising gadget for the company that paid for them and then donated them to the city, the clothes store Modehaus SinnLeffers. Its headquarters in Kassel are located in Friedrichsplatz, next to the Museum Fridericianum, in the neoclassical Rotes Palais, a building badly damaged during World War II, whose only surviving element is the portico with columns on which these multiracial statues rest. Marisa Sobrino praises them as a nexus with the building’s architectural mixture of styles (Sobrino, 1999: 13, 73). Their public acclaim has also expanded to other cities.12 Comments usually stress that these sculptures are monuments which highlight immigrants in society. More humorous are the alien, Michelin-like, statues by Schütte called Ganz Grosse Geister (Big Spirits XL), installed since 2004 on the plinth outside the MCA entrance in Chicago. Some artists took to heart this type of politically correct discourse, such as Jonathan Borofsky, the author of Hammering Man, a massive steel sculpture

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made in 1992 for the square outside the brand-new headquarters of the Seattle Art Museum. Its website has echoed the artist’s declaration of this monument as a tribute to the working-class, quoting his eloquent claims that such a location was highly appropriate to celebrate workers.13 But Borofsky has similar hammering men scattered around the world, at times in extremely elitist financial districts. When searching for images of the Hammering Man on the Internet, however, the most repeated view is the black silhouette with a mobile aluminium arm lifting a hammer in front of the postmodern facade of the building designed by Robert Venturi for the Seattle Art Museum, in the heart of the city (Figure 7.6). Up until then, this vast metropolis lacked a central forum. Transferring this institution from the green suburban area of Volunteer Park where it had stood since the 1930s constituted an attempt at creating a symbolic epicentre; both the new location of the museum and this monumental sculpture in the nearby square have become identity icons in Seattle. Thus, the postmodern return to monumental art not only concerns scale – though size does matter – but also popular iconicity, its ability to appeal

Figure 7.6 Hammering Man by Jonathan Borofsky, in front of the Seattle Art Museum (Photo: JPL)

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to citizens’ empathy within a given context.14 Relevant as the topic or the characters may be, what actually grants the sculpture chosen by the museum its ‘monumental’ iconic value is the added affective and symbolic value contributed by urban and institutional surroundings (Ribalta, 1998: 160–169). Martin Puryear has erected in many places his cyclopean biomorphic sculptures that resemble the profile of a head but none so well known as That Profile, made in 1999 for the Getty Centre entrance plaza where his thirteen metres of height are towering over the photogenic belvedere from which visitors can enjoy breathtaking views of Los Angeles. Quite often a publicity relationship is established when an institution uses a pleasant monumental artwork placed in the public space as a popular attraction: its silhouette and that of the building’s may even become the museum’s logo. In order to be competitive in our society, museums do also avail of publicity stunts. No Universal Exhibition or Olympic Games go without a mascot, and the postmodern archetype of ‘museum with monumental pet mascot in front’ has become a category. An early example would be La Paloma, a colossal six-metre-high bronze dove created by Juan Soriano which stands in the square next to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Monterrey since it opened in 1991. Similarly, when the ZKM of Karlsruhe was inaugurated in 1997, a huge red dog known as Rote Hund für Landois created by North American artist Keith Haring was installed in the middle of the square.15 The following year, a four-metre, eight hundredkilogram bronze horse was installed as a titanic sentry on the terrace of the brand-new building of the Musée d’Art Contemporain of Strasburg. The statue, created by Italian artist Mimmo Paladino, was titled Hortus conclusus and had formerly stood in the enclosed patio of Palais Rohan, the headquarters of the other municipal museums. Three life-size bronze horses, made by Deborah Butterfield, settled on the lawn next to the north entrance to the Denver Art Museum in 1997. That year the facade of Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain of Saint-Étienne was complemented by a large abstract sculpture by Calder and an amusing figure resembling a hippopotamus titled Le valet de Boccioni, by Swedish artist Erik Dietman. Almost at the same time was inaugurated in Santiago of Chile the great horse by Fernando Botero in front of the National Museum of Fine Arts, subsequently placed by the entrance of the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2004 the city of Córdoba in Argentina transferred the very popular monumental sculpture of The Polar Bear by Alberto Barral to the entrance of Museo Caraffa, whose renovation was then undertaken. In Dublin in 2011, the Irish Museum of Modern Art placed outside the entrance an enormous bronze statue of a hare playing a drum, titled The Drummer and donated by its author, Welsh artist Barry Flanagan. And in front of the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt, there is since 2015 a huge bronze crow, Krähe II, by Arie van Seim. Likewise, the gigantic teddy bears and other colourful iconic animals by sculptor Eladio de Mora – dEmo – found a privileged position in front of some Spanish institutions.

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But the best instance, without a doubt, is the monumental floral sculpture by Jeff Koons at the entrance to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Figure 7.7). Shaped as a dog, it is called Puppy to everyone’s delight.16 The statue is permanently surrounded by people taking photos. They are not only tourists wishing to keep a reminder of their trip but also local citizens because, as professor Javier Panera puts it, ‘it seems to please everybody to the point that it has become a favourite place to have photos taken in Bilbao on the occasion of weddings or other major family celebrations’ (Panera, 2002: 202). This comment is quoted here because it is very significant what kind of public art people choose to photograph or to have photos taken with, letting those images circulate amongst their friends on social networks or on the Internet. The Guggenheim-Bilbao has two pieces by Jeff Koons, both displayed outdoors; but while Tulips is on a terrace accessible only after paying to enter the museum, Puppy is unquestionably public art appropriated by the citizens posing for photographs. It seems quite revealing that the fifteenth anniversary of the museum was celebrated with a competition of photos of the ‘doggy’. This symbolic form of appropriation does not continue indoors, as photography is not allowed inside the Guggenheim-Bilbao. Even graphic images of Frank Gehry’s building are a registered trademark, theoretically limiting the public disclosure of its architectural silhouette. In practice, though, this has not prevented the image of this museum from being reproduced and even caricatured on countless occasions, often with Koons’s Puppy or with the other ‘monumental pet mascot’ displayed outside: an enormous spider by Louise Bourgeois

Figure 7.7 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, with Puppy by Jeff Koons (Photo: JPL)

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titled Maman. Few passers-by must be aware of the fact that the author gave her sculpture this title that alludes to her mother, who hardly ever ventured out of her home, where she spent her time knitting and defending Louise from a violent rapist father or from the threats of the outside world. They probably will not know either that Koons got the inspiration for the dog’s floral figure from an eighteenth-century classical garden in the German city of Bad Aroisen. According to the artist, Puppy represents the colossal sublimation of his yearning to protect his son and of his commitment to defend children’s rights. Such is the personal background evocated by the creators who conceived these two pieces, but the ensuing meanings acquired by both artworks have been complex, as they travelled around the world prior to being set in Bilbao. Interrelations between public art and museums were particularly noteworthy in the case of the setting of the enormous fox terrier in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sidney and the display of the huge spider in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. Both settings prefigured their current positions outside the Guggenheim-Bilbao, where they have become stars in local lore and even the subject of some celebrated jokes, as people from Bilbao are supposedly prone to exaggerations – thus, such gigantic creatures are gaining added value in situ (Zulaika, 2004). These monumental sculptures have acquired further connotations in the urban context where they stand and have become as much iconic elements of the museum and the city as the famous building they flank, successfully acting as a lure, unlike other interventions of Conceptual art added afterwards which have largely slipped away unnoticed.17 Further versions of the giant spider by Louise Bourgeois were purchased by other museums. Some, such as the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Samsung Museum of Modern Art in Seoul and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, also chose to place them by the entrance, where they are gradually adopting added significance as a result of the interaction between each institution and its city. The special charm of some of these monumental sculptures from museum collections displayed outdoors, attaining the status of ‘corporate image’ due to their popularity, is highly appreciated in the Americas. The logo of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá is inspired by the sculpture of Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar at its doorstep and that of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, also in Bogotá, is based on the work of Carlos Rojas, standing by its entrance. Since 1995 outside the doors of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Cartagena de Indias is placed a work from its collection The Sandman by sculptor Hector Diaz, a figure of 1.8 metres that is complemented around the building by other sculptures not property of the museum but related to it, starting with the monument to San Pedro Claver, a masterpiece by local artist Enrique Grau, whose artistic trajectory is very well represented inside this Museum of Modern Art, as he was its director for many years, including in 1998 when his great statue of that holy defender of black slaves was erected between this institution and the neighbouring church-museum dedicated to the saint, in a picturesque square later enhanced with eleven

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Figure 7.8 Plaza Botero and Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia (Photo: JPL)

rusty steel sculptures by Edgardo Carmona representing other trades and popular characters. Yet there is a more paradigmatic instance to be found in Colombia: Plaza Fernando Botero in Medellin’s historical city centre. The Museum of Antioquia was transferred in 2000 to the Art Deco building formerly housing the city hall: inside is displayed the copious art collection donated by the famed local artist, whose name was given to the square. In this public space, twenty-three bronze statues stand alined since 2002 as urban milestones, daily contemplated and photographed by hundreds of pedestrians, thus outshining the feelings of insecurity they may have sensed in a formerly unsafe area now under much greater surveillance and busier in terms of tourism and trade (Barrios, 2009: 39) (Figure 7.8). The sculpture promenade is marking the itinerary from the metro to the museum, just like the avenue of sphinxes outside the temples of Karnack and Luxor. Another very postmodern monumental urban itinerary is the project Säulenheiligen (pillar-saints) created by sculptor Christoph Pöggeler between 2001 and 2006 in Dusseldorf. Eight sculptural milestones marking the way from the railway station to strategic points around the city, they are in fact used as publicity columns, but each features on top a large polychrome statue portraying different contemporary human types, including the stereotypical businessman, placed in Joseph-Beuys-Ufer in the vicinity of the Deutsches Kunststoff Museum and the Museum Kunstpalast. Similar

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instances proliferate in Germany and other Western countries: for example, Man Moving 2 by Stephan Balkenholm, located since 2003 in front of the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Málaga as well as another great piece, Sombra azul, by Chema Alvargonzález. In Spain, however, the use of public sculpture to mark visual itineraries leading tourists towards a museum could find more monumental instances in Saragossa. In 1986 the city hall placed two bronze versions of the classical and modern horsemen, originally created by Pablo Gargallo for Barcelona’s Olympic stadium, on both sides of the entrance to the new Museo Pablo Gargallo in the central Plaza de San Felipe. Other gigantic bronze figures of a young shepherd with an eagle and a grape-harvesting woman were added in 2003 and 2010, respectively. These four strategically placed monuments by Gargallo signal the itinerary to his museum from the pedestrian street Alfonso I, the main artery within the historical city centre leading citizens, tourists and pilgrims to the cathedralbasilica devoted to the Virgin of the Pillar. The fact that this museum is a municipal institution, as are the aforementioned in Málaga and Medellín, undoubtedly facilitated the expansion of monumental sculptures throughout surrounding spaces in the city centre; in contrast, collaboration with regional or national institutions ruled by different political authorities is not always straightforward. Negotiations may turn much more fractious in the case of private institutions that could be accused of invading public space with artworks that befit their personal tastes or interests. This was seen in Birmingham in the United Kingdom, where controversy arose when a bank foundation donated Antony Gormley’s massive figure The Iron Man and had it installed between the building occupied by the foundation itself and the city hall near central Victoria Square, where the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is located (Selwood, 1995: 155; Miles, 1997: 224, footnote 24). Another polemic example stands in the German city of Herford, when the statue of rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur, killed in a shooting in Las Vegas, was erected in 2005 on a five-metre plinth in front of the postmodern building designed by Frank Gehry for the MARTA Museum. The author of the sculpture, Italian artist Paolo Chiazera, stirred up diatribes on the Internet and by illegally and temporarily placing versions of the statue in the troubled quarters of other large cities. He was provokingly looking for further disagreements in front of this Museum of Furniture, Art and Environment where his monument remains and is featured prominently on its website. A very different outcome marked the end of the controversy in Venice’s Contemporary Art Centre Punta della Dogana, inaugurated in 2009 by tycoon François Pinault. He commissioned North American artist Charles Ray, famous for his gigantic sculptures of ordinary figures, to create a monumental statue to stand at the apex of the triangle between the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal. Alas, the work Boy with Frog did not please many who associate Venice with the historical glamour of things past. As protests gained ground, this colossal child and his frog had to be protected by a glass case which was removed every day while

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a guard stood permanently vigilant. The city hall eventually stopped renewing permission, and the statue was moved in 2013. By popular request a replica of a nineteenth-century streetlamp, which had formerly been there, was returned to that location. Fortunately, though, the more frequent scenario is for different authorities to discretely join forces, even in cases of rivalry. This is the case of public art on either side of the River Tyne around the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, both in the municipality of Newcastle and in Gateshead in north-eastern England. Curiously enough, however, the corporation of Gateshead has failed to promote more monumental statues in this area, in the vein of Antony Gormley’s iconic Angel of the North which crowns a hill next to the A1 motorway. A worthy emulation stands in Singapore: Lim Soo’s monument titled Inscription of the Island, a gigantic hand in front of the Singapore Art Museum, the main organizer of the 2016 biennale who commissioned this artwork. Such colossal imagery originates in a postmodern rereading of historical statuary, remarkably popular when featuring undefined life-size figures with whom the public may feel able to identify. Like the two statues constituting Gormley’s masterwork, Reflection, outside/inside DeCordova Museum, while other institutions have followed suit with similar statues. Later, Antony Gormley himself has evolved towards an even more monumental maniera, creating ‘architectural sculptures’, such as Habitat, a house-sized monument in the form of a crouching man. Funded by the Percent for Art Programme after the construction in 2009 of the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, it is located in front of this cultural building designed by architect David Chipperfield, who has also collaborated with Gormley in other public interventions. In a very similar style, two stainless monumental figures by sculptor Xavier Veilhan with the faceted silhouettes of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, the architects of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, have been installed, since 2017, outside it, in Place Edmond Michelet: as their identification labels indicate, they belong to the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne and were donated to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the building. However, if the most typical approach to monumental figurative statuary in postmodernity involved sarcasm-filled historical revisionism, this section ought to make final reference to a particularly sardonic piece: Como un monumento al artista, created in 2010 by Seville-born artist Curro González on commission from the then director of the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC), José Lebrero. It consists of a self-portrait sculpture in polychrome bronze placed on top of a pedestal, complemented by two interactive elements: some trombones that play a fanfare whenever a visitor crosses the threshold, and his or her image is then recorded by a camera and later reproduced in the reception hall of the CAAC (Figure 7.9). Evidently, as the title claims, the self-portrait-sculpture is not a monument but a playful questioning of how the artist sees his audience and how we look at the artist, mockingly portrayed as a one-man band with a palette, a computer,

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Figure 7.9 Curro González: As a monument to the artist, at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville (Photo: JPL)

a video recorder and many other devices or items whose iconography is explained in detail in an interview with the artist on the museum’s website.18 Neither the interviewer nor the interviewee, however, make any reference to the Romantic monuments to artists placed outside museums, a paradigm whose civic roots, both in terms of urban decoration and political decorum, were implanted in that city in the middle of the nineteenth century: Murillo’s statue in the square by the Museo de Bellas Artes of Seville must have acted, consciously or unconsciously, as a counter-model to Curro González. Moreover, the fact that the latter chose to place his portrait facing away from the garden – the favourite setting of urban and sculpture ideals of the Modern Movement – can hardly be coincidental.

7.3 Public art as an interface: overcoming boundaries between outdoor and indoor exhibition space Highbrow approaches formerly inspiring public art commissions have given way to our present cultural policies not only focused on supporting art and artists but also increasingly concerned with the location and the people

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whom they are intended to benefit. On the other hand, in a similar move, art museums no longer act as elitist preserves; in order to justify the subsidies they receive, they seek to promote interaction with their spatial and social surroundings. Some Central European museologists have coined the term discursive museum, referring to any institution whose activities are not centred on blockbuster exhibitions categorizable as mere entertainment, opting instead for an intellectual discourse through other strategies, including the expansion of exhibitions and collections with installations and interventions throughout the urban context (Noever, 2001).19 Yet surprisingly enough, all their study cases consist of pieces placed outdoors on temporary display; it would have likely been coherent to prioritize as examples those institutions that permanently install their collection in the open air. For instance, the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in Marl (Germany), a museum inaugurated in the heart of this Rhenish city in 1982, soon after the Pompidou Centre set the trend for the return of cultural revitalization policies in city centres. It is located on the ground floor of the new city hall, a Brutalist building of transparent walls whose contents can be viewed without payment from both inside and outside (Figure 7.10). The relevant fact, however, is that its collections – and the curatorship thereof, as all the sculptures are labelled and explanatory panels are provided in situ – have been scattered around the square, on the grass around the neighbouring lake, in the surroundings

Figure 7.10 Sculpture Museum, Marl, with collections inside and outside (Photo: JPL)

190 Museums taken to the streets of the municipal theatre and of some nearby education centres, plus other zones well worth a detour, such as the historical Paracelsus clinic or the old cemetery. Similarly, today countless museums display artworks and organize activities in public spaces, attempting to reach out to citizens to make them feel addressed and involved. In the same way that the New Museology of the 1980s sought a greater social engagement, artist, activist and educator Suzanne Lacy argued then for more social art practices intended to be useful for people and reflecting their concerns, which she called New Genre Public Art in the title of a symposium and the ensuing book edited by her in 1994. That had a tremendous influence on the promotion of innovative forms of ‘public-minded’ arts, subsequently reinforced by the influence of Nicolas Bourriaud’s 1998 book, Esthétique relationnelle. It is under their inspiration that the socially engaged convergence between museums and public art has been proclaimed as a new cultural paradigm in relevant literature (Hein, 2006: 145; Mancini, 2011: 99; Senie, in Knight & Senie, 2018: 6–8). But these experts in museology and public art have centred their studies in performances and temporary interventions. Indeed, it is difficult to find permanent museum displays installed outdoors responding to this social profile. A related case, though more precisely linked to the social use of art as street furniture vindicated by Siah Armajani, is the Art Museum of Miami University in Oxford (Ohio), whose entrance features an abstract steel sculpture resembling a shooting star made in 1995 by Mark di Suvero as a tribute to Johannes Kepler, while the rest of the sculptures on the campus not only follow the topic of astronomy but also act as benches, where students may sit.20 As this example evinces, the modern tradition of surrounding a brand-new museum with meadows strewn with abstract sculptures has not ceased to propagate both in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. Yet while this arrangement originally acted as a natural/artistic buffer isolating museums from the urban bustle, after the crisis of modernity they have frequently met purposes of interrelation with the neighbours living close by. This does not imply that former models are obsolete, as sometimes they are remodelled to the service of greater social outreach. Museum space and urban realms are so intertwined at times in public usage that transit from one to the other goes practically unnoticed because this is ultimately how it is intended.21 One may venture into a museum not necessarily to visit it but simply to have a coffee, buy a book or avail of other services: facilities, such as cafeterias, cinemas or bookshops, are permeating the temples of the Muses to such an extent that these public spaces increasingly resemble shopping malls, airports or leisure centres. Likewise, activities organized by museums are so closely enmeshed in city life that they usually open some of their facilities as public spaces or locate some pieces from their collections in urban settings. Encouraging people to come in and socialize is the new purpose of the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has relinquished its former reclusive asceticism.

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It has ceased to act as an aesthetic buffer from the hustle and bustle of city life: today everybody enters the museum at Fifty-Fourth Street through this sculpture garden, freely accessible since the 2004 extension by Yoshio Taniguchi and very popular with citizens coming to sit there or to have a drink with friends on the terrace, regardless of whether they later decide to enter the museum or not. As the New York MoMA continues to be an influential referent emulated worldwide, museums of modern and contemporary art are not any more like the reclusive centres imagined by Le Corbusier. Fences, both real and metaphorical, are coming down. More caustic viewpoints could claim that other invisible – economic – fences still survive when the MoMA displays sculptures outdoors as a complimentary art appetizer but charges a high price for access to the cultural banquet served indoors. This criticism is often applied to the GuggenheimBilbao, a massive tourist attraction with expensive entrance fees, to the point that most sightseers are content just taking a look from outside. Which actually confirms that expanding some of the museum’s collection outdoors, to public spaces, is a good idea. Perhaps they should also follow the example of Madrid’s MNCARS, where there is no charge to see Richard Serra’s monumental installation on the ground floor, and it would be nice if people in the Basque museum could similarly have free access to see his gigantic sculpture Snake in the Fish Gallery or Jenny Holzer’s Installation for Bilbao, as both artworks are derivations of famous public art interventions.22 This would be particularly pleasing to Basque citizens whose taxes paid for the building and the complementing art interventions, all of them commissioned by the Guggenheim Foundation from foreign artists, which continues to annoy many locals, even though Chillida’s artwork Abrazo XI is now displayed on a balcony – only accessible from within the museum. A more assorted sampling has been offered in the collection of numerous sculptures installed by the municipality along the riverside, combining local and foreign art and also displaying a great diversity of styles.23 Heeding this experience, other Spanish museums of contemporary art are being more sensitive in selecting what artworks they offer permanently outdoors. For instance, the Museo-Centro Vasco Artium in Vitoria, built in 2001, used to have just one sculpture – La Mirada by Miquel Navarro, donated by Caja Vital – displayed in the nearby square, where a copious ensemble has later been gradually created with pieces by Vicente Larrea, Jorge Oteiza, Eduardo Chillida and Richard Serra. Not too far away, the Würth Museum in La Rioja also started with an emblematic monumental work by Miquel Navarro just before its opening in 2007, and henceforth a sculpture garden has been constituted, showing a great variety of styles. But perhaps the most significant Spanish case, regarding open air dissemination of sculptures from the collection of an art museum in an expanded territory, is Huesca’s Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, a foundation run by the city and province corporations, along with the government of Aragon and other private ventures. Its collection contains artworks from the project ‘Art and

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Nature’ scattered around various natural locations within the province of Huesca, consisting of seven site-specific interventions commissioned from Richard Long, Ulrich Rückriem, Siah Armajani, Fernando Casás, David Nash, Alberto Carneiro and Per Kirkeby. The latter also made the point of installing, as a symbolic reminder or link, a brick construction in the garden of the CDAN, where a monumental version of one of the pieces from the Beulas collection, Los novios, had already been placed since the inauguration of the museum in 2006 – a sculpture by Joaquín García Donaire, which perfectly suits Rafael Moneo’s building. The huge stone stele by Rückriem was later installed, as well as other sculptures, having finally completed the ensemble a work by an Aragonese artist, Mario Molins. Another two instances inevitably come to mind because of their points in common, though with different social approaches. One is the Kunstmuseum of Bochum, whose facade is also paired with a sculpture by Ulrich Rückriem transferred there from a different location in the city. It is titled Granit Bleu de Vire, geschnitten, consisting of a block of Normandy granite cut in two, though the two halves put together do not match so as to stress the contrast between the clear-cut and the rough surfaces. This artwork was specifically devised by the artist in 1988 to stand before the building of the Westfalen Bank in a busy commercial street, but in 2008 the building changed owners; thus, the bank moved out and donated the piece to the city. Hence the sculpture has stood by the entrance to the museum of art ever since. The massive geometric work by Giuseppe Spagnulo, Grande Ruota, had been transferred there too in 2006, having been displayed for five years at the Schlosspark Weitmar. These pieces, alongside the pre-existing sculptures by Volf Vostell and Jiri Hilmar, were later complemented by François Morellet’s installation titled Skyline, consisting of an arc made of neon tubes framing the museum entrance since 2009 as part of its collection. Yet no museum label can be found outdoors: these inextricable pieces, none of them by local artists, look like alien objects which landed at the door of the Bochum Museum of Art with little intention of engaging in social dialogue with the broad public around. The counterexample, where similar pieces are seeking to interplay with the local community, is the Musée d’Art Contemporain of Lyons, whose surroundings have received an even greater accumulation of artworks from its collection, all of them perfectly labelled and explained in situ and on the web page in the framework of the outreach programme Art aux abords du musée.24 Many of them are highly innovative conceptual artworks, and here again a brick architectural sculpture by Danish artist Per Kirkeby also stands by the entrance. Another monumental bronze sculpture doesn’t go amiss here: the cyclopean piece World Markets, made in 2004 by Chinese-French artist Wang Du, imitating a creased piece of paper. But the two most prominent pieces, presiding over the entry, are two interventions by local artists: on the one hand, Yves Henri’s black sculpture of a pixie watching out, Le guetteur du musée, part of a group of similar figures scattered since 2004

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Figure 7.11 Lyons Museum of Contemporary Art, with artworks by Combas, Henri and Kirkeby (Photo: Natalia Juan)

in different socially significant locations chosen by the author and by the neighbours who would collaborate with him; on the other hand, eight years later the figure of a rocker stage-diving was added on the facade, painted by Robert Combas (Figure 7.11). They are not part of the building, decorating the front wall, but part of the museum collection, reaching out to citizens. Here and in many museums in general, paying particular attention to local artists in outdoor collections is intended to convey an institutional image of bondage with the community rather than alienating it, inducing museums to act as intermediaries between global art history and the city talents, between art creation and the specific socio-cultural idiosyncrasy (Belting, 2007; Vargas Rodríguez, 2011) – or idiosyncrasies, in the case of such multicultural cities as Vancouver. Lacking other buildings to symbolize power – the city hall is currently located on the outskirts – political demonstrations and marches usually gather before the Vancouver Art Gallery, whose pompous neoclassical facade acts as the symbolic backdrop for all sorts of protests. The choice of contemporary artworks displayed around the museum therefore needed to be politically correct. A monumental bronze fowl, Bird of Spring, presides over the steps to the underground station in the square by Howe Street: it is a new enlarged version of a smaller sculpture carved in stone by Inuit artist

194 Museums taken to the streets Abraham Etungat in 1979. Other sculptures surrounding the building are the work of artists from different ethnic minorities within the city, especially Chinese Canadians who are represented by an installation commissioned in 2001 from highly reputed local artist Ken Lun, who had four different boats installed on each corner of the building facing the four points of the compass and painted in the respective stereotypical colours of the Indian, Asian, black and white races: Four Boats Stranded: Red and Yellow, Black and White. In the same city, at the University of British Columbia, the main entrance to the Museum of Anthropology is flanked by two welcoming sculptures recently commissioned from two Musqueam artists; the public area at the rear also boasts posts and other pieces by sculptors of Haida, Gitxsan, Nisga’a or Oweekeno origin (Lorente, 2011). Canadian cultural institutions are remarkably sensitive in this respect, particularly outdoors. Since 2004 the collection of sculptures by the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montréal strove to reflect a multicultural approach displaying a variety of styles, material and iconography; also, the outdoor collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa includes a menhir titled Black Nest, created by Bill Vazan as a tribute to indigenous culture, or the colourful wild running horses by Joa Fafard. Similarly, in the United States of America, museums no longer only consider artistic merits for their public art programmes but also their relevance to the context and the promotion of civic values, equality, tolerance and democratic culture. Since the beginning of the millennium, the Portland Museum of Art (Oregon) has placed some of its sculptures outside, notably a monumental piece by Roy Lichtenstein, while being scrupulously careful to display the work of local artists, including some immigrants from abroad, such as Spanish-born Manuel Izquierdo. Likewise, in 2006, when the construction of the new Museum of Contemporary Art was almost finished in downtown Denver, its director commissioned five art installations to be displayed around the building: the illuminated post depicting a bloody heart, created by the British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, may be the most conspicuous, as it stands by the entrance catching attention with its kitsch allure, but the other four were commissioned to local artists from Colorado who endeavoured to integrate them into the socio-spatial context. The following year the Denver Art Museum inaugurated, on the northern side of its headquarters, the sculpture installation Circle, commissioned to the artist Edgar Heap of Birds, a tribute to ancestral Cheyenne culture. Likewise, the large sphere Eran, by aboriginal artist Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher, has been located since 2010 before the new building of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. In Australia indeed, the established policy is attempting to reflect plural identities, paying particular attention to native culture which has inspired site-specific works at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sidney since it was inaugurated in 1991. In particular, the most visible piece, displayed since 2012 by the entrance to the newly expanded building, is titled Warrang, an allusion to the aboriginal name of this city. The shipyards which had formerly stood on

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this very site are appropriately commemorated in the verses written on the floor where a two-metre high illuminated arrow points to them. The arrow is adorned with the typical diagonal lines of the Wiradjuri culture which is where its author, Brook Andrew, originates from. In recent years the works of some minority artists and creators from marginal groups have also been incorporated into the square surrounding the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Bogotá, such as the metallic installation created in 2004 by self-taught artist Raúl Álvarez, while a fresh democratizing approach in terms of the exterior collection has been adopted going back to 1971. By 1998 up to twenty-two sculptures were on permanent display outdoors, showing a representative variety of chronology and styles: geometric abstraction, Magic Realism, Pop and Minimalism. After the restoration of all the pieces and the renovation of their respective didactic panels in 2009, these and other artworks from the collection were replaced throughout the square and in nearby streets (Figure 7.12). Curatorship with social significance is the term coined by Gustavo A. Ortiz Serrano, director of the museum, to refer to the expansion of activities around the working-class neighbourhood of Minuto de Dios (Ortíz Serrano et al., 2011). More radically social-minded theoreticians of public art argue that the qualifier ‘public’ can only truly apply to designate artworks resulting from processes involving the participation of the community – that is, in the

Figure 7.12 Labelled outdoor collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bogotá (Photo: JPL)

196 Museums taken to the streets fullest sense of the term community art, made together with/by the public (Remesar, 1999; Lamarche-Vadel, 2001). Few museums have promoted this type of grass-roots collective collaboration, not even those aligned with the so-called museología comunitaria, or socio-museology: it is a beautiful concept, though hard to bring about because the museum will inevitably deal with interlocutors who may be representatives of neighbourhood, religious or tribal minorities, often at the risk of excluding those within those groups who are different in terms of education, age, gender or ideas. No community exists as a plural subject; we are all individuals. The right to be different is inherent to the freedom that allows us to debate and express our opinion, thus collectively influencing politics in a democratic society. The same applies to public museums and public art, as they do not need direct popular participation or even to be ruled by active suffrage, though laudable precedents exist: for example, the poll to choose the colour the Eiffel Tower is periodically painted where all visitors can take part – though they are given limited options to choose from, and the result of the vote is not binding. Against the solipsism of the vain who wish to impose their private preferences upon all, public involvement should be promoted by museums with outreaching curatorial commitment, even beyond the strict area of their institutional competence. This is, for instance, implemented by the education department of Es Baluard in Palma de Mallorca, a museum of contemporary art inaugurated in 2004 whose Art and Public Space Programme is not only dedicated to pieces from its own collection permanently displayed outdoors but also to municipal sculptures on nearby urban promenades. The Centro de Arte Contemporáneo in Málaga organizes workshops to explain large murals painted by D*Face, Obey and Boamistura in the neighbourhood, just behind the museum building: though the institution was not directly involved in their creation, the staff is committed to promoting this cultural district full of urban art. Even more credit should be given to the fact that the artistic district of Lastarria in Santiago de Chile has the Plaza del Mulato Gil as its epicentre: a 130-metre squared area owned by the Museo de Artes Visuales, a private foundation, where artworks and open air performances are presented to invigorate this urban spot. All over the world, borders between the city and the museum are being blurred. Such institutions as the London Tate Modern have been programming major public art interventions on their facades, in the hall or within other free transit spaces. They are taking the cue from the Centre Pompidou, whose escalators and terraces were originally conceived as public lookouts, but the climb is now reserved for visitors with ticket entry. Free access to urban panoramas of Madrid is now offered by the aforementioned MNCARS, as a public itinerary is suggested both inside and outside this national Spanish museum, culminating in the terrace of the expansion designed by Jean Nouvel, originally a place reserved only for private events but transformed into a freely accessible public space on the initiative of Director Manuel Borja Villel. Strong points in this public trail are the two

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monumental statues in the squares by each of the museum’s entrances: they both were originally installed as part of temporary exhibitions and consist of an enlarged version of El pueblo español tiene un camino que conduce a una estrella, mounted in 2001 on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to its author, Alberto Sánchez, and Brushstroke by Roy Lichtenstein, placed there for a monographic exhibition of the American pop art star in 2004 but declared two years later a permanent deposit. This process of public art becoming permanent after popular and critical acclaim actually constitutes a sensible strategy, most particularly around museums because it gradually creates a wrapping of artistic mementoes vindicating special events in the history of the institution. This is an exercise of self-referential memory which constitutes a crucial claim for ‘critical museology’, together with controversial, questioning, plural, subjective discourses. In 2015 when Professor José Miguel García Cortés was appointed the new director of the Instituto de Arte Moderno de Valencia (IVAM), he started his tenure with a temporary exhibition, including a couple of artworks placed on the entrance steps – sculptures had often been placed there to attract visitors, but in a city where burning figures is a local tradition, some precedents of vandalism existed.25 A circular piece created by Richard Serra in 1970, Untitled, has appropriately been chosen to remain there after the show. Its most significant feature is the fact that it is pierced into the ground, barely protruding, so it does not disturb future interventions in this public area and is not easily vandalized – the endurance of the accompanying museum label has revealed as more problematic. This sculpture will presumably be complemented by other more recent works at the entrance on the occasion of further exhibitions once public feedback has been gauged. In other countries it is assumed as common practice this process of displaying a sculpture temporarily at first and then turning it into a permanent fixture after its success has been secured. The decision is quite often not immediate, as lengthy transactions are at times required in order to turn a temporary installation into a permanent one. It took twenty years, from 1981, when sculptor Mauro Staccioli temporarily placed an artwork by the steps leading to Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, until he was commissioned to create a permanent monumental sculpture in Corten steel, Roma 2011, on the occasion of the renovation of the surrounding area, including a sculpture garden with artworks from its collection.26 On other occasions, the delay is due to the need to test new techniques and cuttingedge art tendencies against both the elements and popular judgement: only once they have passed this trial may they eventually be declared permanent urban attractions. Five years elapsed since, in 2006, Czech sculptor Magdalena Jetelová erected four ‘columns’ with red carpets in front of the Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg for a temporary exhibition before the institution purchased this work titled, in memory of her stay in Cuba, Venceremos/Sale, a sarcastic reference to the collapse of Fidel Castro’s regime, mixing a Spanish slogan and an English offer of a sale. Meanwhile,

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in 2006 it was soon decided not to make permanent the spectacular installation created by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm on the occasion of a personal exhibition at the Museum Moderner Kunst (MuMoK) in Vienna, against whose facade an overturned house seemed to have been thrown – hence its title, House Attack. Some felt uneasy walking under a sculpture set on the roof with no bolts to hold it in place in order to respect the museum’s listed building status and the intellectual rights of its architects. Although art institutions are free to choose what to display indoors, when it comes to outdoors, this is not always the case – not even on land owned by them if it is given over to public use. Artworks that may be offensive or unsafe are usually banned. So it is stated, for example, by the rules of the annual competitions for open air art projects in the respective spaces reserved for this purpose outside the PS1 of New York or the MAXXI of Rome; besides, works in these spaces should promote public values, facilitating social inclusion, engaging new audiences, encouraging the interaction of people with one another and the artworks, promoting emerging art, critical thinking and so forth. This is even more so in cases where the land around the museum is public property and it is colonized by the museum, either with permanent works from its collections or with temporary installations. The Orlando Museum of Art (OMA), initially simply concerned with questions of decoration when they started to install, at the turn of the millennium, such pieces as Victory of the Winds, a geometric sculpture by Parisian JeanClaude Farhi donated in 2001, now takes all sorts of social considerations into account to select the temporary installations placed in Loch Haven Park between its premises and the building of the Mennello Museum of Art. Certainly there is a growing interest in using public space adjacent to museums as an ‘outstanding exhibition hall’, according to Martí Perán (quoted in Aramburu, 2006: 161). But that adjoining area should not be considered just an added gallery because not any kind of artwork shown inside the museum can go outside it, even temporarily. And if so much forethought is today given to outdoor temporary displays, it makes all the more sense for museums to submit open air permanent installations to preliminary negotiation and later to public approval. It often happens, outdoors as indoors, that some pieces on temporary display are eventually added to the permanent collection of the museum when quality or other circumstances have led to their acquisition. This may also be subject to the public support garnered or to other considerations, such as appropriateness in terms of corporate image, style codes and the like. In the United Kingdom and North America, sculptures are usually placed during a long testing time at the entrance of some museums for fundraising, seeking the collaboration of people or corporations in order to purchase them. This was how the stainless steel sculpture by YuYu Yang, Interdependence, placed by the entrance of the Mulvane Art Museum in 1995, became the icon of its outdoor collection. But successful crowdfunding does not always mean that the pieces remain in situ. This happened to the large bottle containing

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Figure 7.13 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, with Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare (Photo: Javier Gómez)

a replica of Nelson’s HMS Victory by Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare, successfully displayed for two years on the empty plinth of Trafalgar Square outside London’s National Gallery. Then Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle was purchased thanks to numerous public and private contributions and has been permanently installed in front of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich since April 2012 (Figure 7.13). A similar fate befell the next winning sculpture displayed in front of the National Gallery in the framework of the Fourth Plinth public art contest, a colossal golden bronze depicting a child on a rocking horse created by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, which has been installed since 2015 outside the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj (Denmark). Likewise, some of the artworks within the programme of sculpture installations placed at the entrance of New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art were so successful that they became purchased by benefactors for the museum’s permanent collection, but they eventually abandoned the facade nevertheless. The only exception hitherto has been the ship by Chris Burden installed in 2013 on the occasion of a solo exhibition devoted to the artist, whose death two years later is likely the reason why his boat continues to be displayed there as a posthumous tribute.27 Conversely, the monumental bronze head of Eros by Igor Mitoraj, displayed outside the Minneapolis Institute of Art soon after the artist’s death in 2015 so as to raise funds for its purchase, rests

200 Museums taken to the streets at the moment in a corner of the sculpture garden surrounding the building, while an angel by Barlach is now flanking the main entrance. This last fact constitutes a relevant point which had been omitted earlier when commenting on new public artworks installed by recent extensions of museum buildings. If many institutions are now taking new works from the permanent collection outdoors, seeking a new look and a larger audience, it does not necessarily have to be at the doorstep, altering an architecturalurban-artistic set worthy of being safeguarded. The ‘contact zones’ between public art and museums are often expanding much further. For example, the headquarters of the Seattle Art Museum are a considerable distance from its Olympic Sculpture Park, while the Vancouver Art Gallery has displayed art outdoors since 2009 in the framework of a programme of exhibitions eloquently called Offsite because they take place in a different part of the city. Many museums have venues with public art programmes at airports, casinos, shopping malls, hospitals or other external locations. Processual or non-objective art certainly contributes to blurring territorial boundaries in many new forms of public art, from street art, light, sound or smell interactions, video mapping and so on. The upcoming trends are architectural devices where net art and video artworks can be screened, alternating with images of some of the activities conducted inside, as in the case of Saragossa’s Centro de Arte y Tecnología, Etopia, whose ‘media-facades’ also publicize programmes of activities as well as civic, poetic or artistic slogans, curatorial analysis, criticism and interpretations outdoors. Other technological interfaces spread all kinds of information still further. As it could not be otherwise, the new technologies are creating novel interfaces between museum and city space. Indeed, if public art and museums seemed traditionally a cultural dichotomy, some scholars contend that this opposition has now come to an end, as displaying art in public spaces is today one of the favourite forms of socio-cultural outreach carried out by museums, at times far beyond their walls (Hein, 2006: 145; Zuliani, 2012: 93; Jiménez-Blanco, 2014: 157; Knight & Senie, 2018: xiii).

Notes 1 This designation was branded by Santos Zunzunegui based on vast bibliography paying particular attention, amongst other aspects, to urban/architectural effect (Zunzunegui, 1990: 91). Other scholars have proposed the term antimuseum to refer to the musealization of factories and art interventions in industrial landscapes (Layuno, 2007). 2 This oxymoron inherent in the denomination ‘institutional critique’ has been recognized by those who coined that label, invented in the mid-eighties at the New York School of Visual Arts (according to Fraser, 2005: 278–283. The bibliography in this respect is huge, but the main referent remains Welchman, 2006). 3 Some non-permanent memorable examples, such as Daniel Buren’s Un enveloppe peut cacher un autre, partially covering in 1989 the neoclassical facade of the Musée Rath in Geneva or the installation Museum by Alfredo Jaar in 1991 on the windows of the Hirshhorn Museum of Washington, are compiled in a

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famous book (Putnam, 2001). Buren’s public art interventions questioning the art system but commissioned by institutions representing officialdom have particularly interested art critics and museologists (Buchloh, 2000; Guilbault, 2009: 43–55, 69–83; Zuliani, 2012: 75). New York’s initiative, however, kept a low profile. In 1998 the Dia Art Foundation installed five basalt blocks paired with five trees along the pavement in front of their exhibition hall in Twenty-Second West Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. They continue to stand there now as a nostalgic reminder of the past, as the institution has moved its collections and exhibitions to Beacon; thus, this instance of public art has lost the added symbolism of its location in front of one of the most frequented epicentres of museum activity in Manhattan. It was such a success that in 1989 Dani Karavan himself carried out another intervention called Dialogue, combining concrete and nature behind the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum of Duisburg. This art lineage could be the source of many other sculpture initiatives linked to natural elements, such as the Deep Fountain produced in 1996 by Cristina Iglesias for the square in front of Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts or her Puerta-Umbral opening onto a garden as part of the extension of the Prado Museum completed in 2007. Ignasi Aballí, Daniel Buren, Fortuny/O’Brien, Magdalena Jetelová, Tadashi Kawamata, Rosie Leventon, Perejaume, Pipilotti Rist, Terry Smith, Montserrat Soto, Richard Venlet, Michel Verjux, Richard Wilson and Craig Wood took part. The museum held an exhibition and published a catalogue titled Mirades (sobre el Museu). Further information can be found at their web page: www.macba.cat/ es/expo-miradas-sobre-el-museo (retrieved on 10 October 2017). MACBA has placed beside this mural by Chillida a museum label, which indicates that it was a donation of Sara Lee Corporation. Since 2014 the rest of the wall has been decorated with another mural, a reproduction of the graffiti painted against AIDS by Keith Haring, originally in a nearby building long since demolished. Besides, Levitated Mass is a very popular example in specialized literature on public art (see, for example, Doherty, 2015: 62–65). When Marseilles city hall inaugurated the Musée d’Art Contemporain in 1994, it was thought that, given that it stood in the peripheral Bonnevaine district, far from the city’s tourist and cultural epicentre, some kind of art entourage would be required in the form of public artworks signed by such renowned artists as César or Buren. A work by the latter was installed in a nearby crossroad. It was transferred from a different location it had originally been intended for in 1989 on the occasion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution. This installation, titled Mât des Fédérés, was created as a constellation of seven public interventions in seven different French cities wherefrom volunteers for the national guard had been sent to fight for a constitutional regime. Five hundred blue-and-white striped banderoles hang from masts in their honour. But no explanatory sign or identification mark made it clear this was the work of the most famous French Conceptual artist, so it looked like an odd festive decoration widely ignored and gradually decaying. The city hall, following the precedent of other cities where this constellation of masts and little flags had been installed, eventually decided to remove it due to its poor state of preservation, having first received the artist’s prior consent. Conversely, César’s huge thumb, a mere version of a multiple sculpture already displayed in many cities in France and throughout the world – the biggest was installed in Seoul on the occasion of the Olympic Games in 1988 – has become a popular icon and a local identity landmark. No signs identify it either, but many locals and tourists have photographs taken by the ‘monument’; some even share them on the Internet and social networks, and their comments seem to indicate that they identify and value it as a famous artwork, even linking it to the neighbouring MAC.

202 Museums taken to the streets 10 Patrick Raynaud is an artist with clear ideas about public art (Raynaud, 2002), and this decision seems coherent. 11 Unlike Lichtenstein’s monumental sculpture nearby or the other works of the MNCARS collection displayed in public spaces, all identified with an individual museum label. A didactic leaflet explaining the whole ensemble can be downloaded from www.museoreinasofia.es/coleccion/obras-espacios-publicos (retrieved on 10 October, 2017). 12 Other figures from this group were purchased by the Possehl Foundation for the city of Lübeck, where they have been permanently displayed since 1995 on top of the concert and conference palace; they have also been recently temporarily installed on top of the facade of the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen (Switzerland). It would hardly be a surprise to find them outside the Tate Modern, as Southwark is a multiracial district where – whether taken seriously or sarcastically – these statues of immigrants would look great. 13 ‘The Hammering Man is a worker. The Hammering Man celebrates the worker . . . Let this sculpture be a symbol for all the people of Seattle working with others on the planet to create a happier and more enlightened humanity . . . At its heart, society reveres the worker. The Hammering Man is the worker in all of us’ (A more complete quotation of the text can be found in Lorente, 2013: 54). 14 The curator of the museum in Seattle, Patterson Sims and architect Robert Venturi chose this statue by Borofsky after discarding a Conceptual project by Chris Burden. Then a monumental allegory by Raymond Kaskey installed in Portland in front of a new building in 1995 produced another popular ‘coupling’ of postmodern sculpture and architecture (Finkelpearl, 2000: 29–30, 168–169). 15 Keith Haring had made the original version ten years earlier for the SkupturProjekte in Münster. In the summer of 2009, his sculpture was removed from the square and has been replaced by others since. 16 One of the precursors of people’s appropriation of monumental public artworks ideally or nominally linking them to pet mascots was Picasso’s gigantic sculpture placed in 1967 in front of the Chicago Civic Centre, supposedly inspired by two of the artist’s great loves at the time: his Afghan hound and his wife, Jacqueline. But any sexual connotation was discarded in the North American city, and the artwork, titled Chicago Picasso, became a triumphal ‘animal’ icon endorsed by all (Senie, 1992a: 93–108; Senie, 1992b: 237–246). In 1989 the Charging Bull by Arturo di Modica in Wall Street, New York, and in 2005 the gigantic bear by Lawrence Argent standing by the facade of the Colorado Convention Centre in Denver became further examples of this postmodern fancy for monumental animals (Zask, 2013: 69–70). Harriet F. Senie has further developed the idea of the public monument appropriated by citizens as a pet, applying it not only to animal statues but also to human figures dressed or decorated by common people on the occasion of some celebrations (Senie, 2003: 189). 17 Besides Jeff Koons’s huge dog, Puppy, and Louise Bourgeois’s enormous spider, Maman, other pieces from the museum’s collection are displayed outdoors, such as the stainless steel sculpture Tall Tree & The Eye by Anis Kapoor, Daniel Buren’s installation Red Arches on the La Salve bridge and a massive installation titled Fog by Fujiko Nakaya, consisting of burners which start operating at dusk (López-Remiro, 2009). 18 Particularly relevant in this conversation are the references to the concept of monument and to the Romantic vision of artists (cf. Interview by Pepe Yñíguez with Curro González at www.caac.es/prensa/dossiers/doss_currgonz10ent. pdf (retrieved on 28 July 2016). The programme ‘Art in public spaces’ is crucial to the museal identity of the CAAC in Seville, an institution that without such permanent art interventions might seem like a mere centre for temporary

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exhibitions; thus, this perennial selection of the collection is very well explained through museum labels, guided tours and on the official website: www.caac.es/ programa/interv13/frame.htm (retrieved on 25 July 2017). The expression ‘discursive museum’ is now ubiquitous, after at least two decades in use (Marstine, 2017: 157). Information from their website: https://www.lowe.miami.edu/collections/publicsculpture-program/index.html y https://miamioh.edu/cca/art-museum/collections/ sculpture-park/index.html (retrieved on 7 June 2018). An Italian specialist on the interrelation between museum architecture and its surroundings poetically entitled his taxonomic analysis of the new public spaces of contemporary art ‘museum outside the museum’ (Costanzo, 2007). Richard Serra’s three winding steel plates embracing visitors in the Fish Gallery of Guggenheim-Bilbao may not be understood without the precedent of his controversial Tilted Arc in New York’s Federal Plaza. Jenny Holzer’s installation consists of nine vertical double-sided LED panels displaying a flow of letters forming scripts in Basque, Spanish and English. The texts were originally created for a project on AIDS formerly used by the artist in another outdoor intervention in Florence. The so-called Paseo de la Memoria was inaugurated in March 2003 between the Palacio Euskalduna, the Guggenheim Museum and the Alameda de Abandoibarra. Created by architect Javier López Chollet, it consists of a three-kilometre promenade which includes a children’s recreation zone with state-of-the-art swings, an interactive fountain, a cafeteria with an outdoor terrace, the new shopping centre Zubiarte and innumerable sculptures, such as Chillida’s El vigía or Dalí’s Bailarina, as well as works by Tücker, Lüpertz, Zugasti, Garraza and others. See www.mac-lyon.com/mac/sections/fr/collection/en_permanence (retrieved on 25 July 2017). There were some conflicts: in March 2000 artist José Sanleón destroyed a monumental sculpture he had made from a ship funnel with steel cables coiled around it – hence its title – The slave – which had been installed by the Consejería de Obras Públicas y Cultura of the Generalitat against the wishes of its director at the time, Juan Manuel Bonet, who resigned soon after the incident. And in December 2009, before the museum inaugurated an exhibition by Bernardí Roig, his sculpture-fountain displayed outside was totally destroyed by another artist. In particular, in 2012 the GNAMC inaugurated at the Giardino delle fontane two monumental sculptures representing two piles of books sculpted by Lucilla Catania on Persian yellow travertine and an aquatic installation by Cloti Ricciradi titled Ipotesi grafica. Chris Burden’s Ghost Ship hanging against the facade above the entrace to the New Museum of Contemporary Art and his installation Twin Skyscrapers were placed there for his 2013 exhibition Extreme Measures; they were not intended to be permanent installations, but their installation was so complicated that it was decided to leave them there indefinitely, also as a postmortem homage to the artists (see the article by Cher Krause Knight in Knight & Senie, 2018: 88–114).

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Epilogue Heritology, a new discipline for the study of public art and museums in cultural districts

This book has discussed pairs of diverse paradigms in the urban clustering of art. The starting point was the paramuseal showcasing of antiquities on the thresholds of the first public museums, followed by the erection of perimuseal monuments as landmarks of cultural hearts. In the second part, modern trends of suburban expansion have been interpreted in light of two inheritances from the classical mouseion, the hilly ideal of a ‘city crown’ and the green sculpture gardens. The postmodern return to the inner cities has been dealt with in the third part, with a double thread: on the one hand, the development of so-called open air museums in urban revitalization processes gathering artworks, from sculptures to street art; on the one hand, the dialectics between Conceptual art installations placed in front of museums as expression of institutional critique and the reverse policies of using populist monumental artworks as publicity stunts, which was then brought to a synthesis, arguing for a socially engaged outreach of museums in the public realm. Unlike other recent publications about this latter argument, more keen on performances and temporary interventions, it has been chosen here to focus on permanent or long-term displays for the sake of a coherent historical overview. But by no means is it intended to establish comparisons in terms of better or worse, as every model of interplay between museums and public art should be appreciated as a worthy cultural legacy. In fact, all of them are still very influential today, as it is made clear in the overlapping chronologies of the successive chapters of this volume, which is not structured as a single teleological narrative. The growing interest in installing artworks outside museums today inspired me to study its antecedents, so far a rare topic of research. I hope further thinking will be prompted by this book in order to foster more linkages joining together public art, museums and urban culture. As a critical art historian, I am too aware that our reflections on the past are necessarily influenced by present tendencies, for we reconsider historical events and ideals in the light of our respective sociopolitical and intellectual context that is always changing and changing us (Messsage, 2018: 46–47). As a critical museologist, I firmly believe that museums cannot be segregated from other cultural sites and amenities, including monuments and public art as well as

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different theoretical formulations or counter-formulations, which we must analyze to enable museums to be better understood as hubs within hypercomplex networked fields (Shelton, 2013: 15–19). Such hubs can be virtual as well, based on technological interfaces: the Internet is undoubtedly the new public sphere where museums and public art must keep finding new interrelations! Furthermore, academic disciplines and their respective terminologies can also be an intellectual space of convergence encompassing art and other forms of cultural heritage together in or next to museums: Patrimoniologie is the French neologism proclaimed by the enthusiasts of this hybridization, and it will just be a matter of time for its equivalent to emerge in English or other languages, overcoming habitual boundaries. Meanwhile, I am proposing here, as closing remarks, some afterthoughts on my own evolution in the use of vocabulary while I was writing this book. For the title I have finally preferred the words public art and cultural districts, though these notions can be very elusive. Semiotically regarded, all art is public because, as any other form of communication through signs, it needs to be disclosed by an audience, be it just one person or a multitude. But the expression ‘public art’ has been successfully in use in scholarly literature for more than a century, with broad variable meanings, in terms of legal property, spatial location or social aims. Similarly, a fast-growing bibliography on urban studies is now employing the term cultural district, though strictly speaking this might be considered a pleonasm, as any human setting entails some sort of culture. Art district or arts quarter seem more precise nomenclatures, referring to a neighbourhood with a high density of art professionals, artworks or art venues; therefore, I initially thought that was the field of work framing my research on art museums and public art, but then I realized that the artistic identity of such urban areas was often linked as well to their frequent representation not only in pictures, prints and films but also in other media, like postcards, publicity adverts, books or periodicals and now through all sorts of social networks. Thus, cultural evidences in general and cultural interplay around art in cities would best identify my own point of view: cultural districts was, consequently, the most appropriate designation for the title, together with the key word museums, of course. I am aware that, in Britain, art museums are usually called art galleries, like the commercial venues of art dealers; sometimes I have also used that idiom, inkling to the additional presence of business in the cultural amalgams studied here. However, this is not yet another book about the economic influence of the arts; my goal has been to reflect on arts-led urban boosting from the point of view of museology and related transdisciplinary stances, whatever they might be called. Heritology is an awkward name, but it conveys curatorial ideals theoretically asserting a concept of common property, plus the practical need to safeguard it for the sake of forthcoming generations. Wouldn’t it be nice if my research might collaborate in the future preservation and interpretation of representative instances of paradigmatic artistic heritages highlighted

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here? Even monuments and iconic artworks at museums’ doors are also subject to changing tastes and opinions, as happens indoors to pieces from the permanent collection, which can be removed or replaced from time to time. However, perhaps some emblematic ensembles of outdoor heritage ought to be preserved, just as we have learnt to maintain and even restore former interior designs or displays as historical testimony of past museographies and art tastes. Otherwise, we will only be able to know them through old images and essays written by historians, such as this book.

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Index

Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo 119 Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM), Oberlin 165 Altes Museum, Berlin 30, 109 Alvargonzález, C. 186 Amarica monument, Vitoria-Gasteiz 67n31 Anchorage Museum, Alaska 187 Andrae, J. V. 72 Antúnez, N. 155–6 Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj 199 Arp, J. 114, 123 Arriaga monument, Bilbao 62 Art Institute, Chicago 109 Bacon, F. 72 Balkenholm, S. 186 Baltimore Museum of Art 119 Behrens, P. 75–7, 85–6, 97n7, 97n10 Bénédite, L. 5, 103, 105, 107–8, 127n8 Berthier, J. 175 Beuys, J. 168 Blaine, J. 173–4 Borofsky, J. 180, 202n13, 202n14 Bosselt, R. 75, 77, 78, 97n7, 97n10 Botero, F. 182, 185 Boucher monument, Paris (today in Longwy) 51–2, 65n14 Bourgeois, L. 183–4, 202n17 Bourriaud, N. 190 Brancusi, C. 118, 119, 145 British Museum, London 26, 37 Bürck, P. 75, 78, 97n7, 97n10 Burden, C. 172, 199, 202n14, 203n27 Buren, D. 174, 201n9, 202n17 Burle Marx, R. 115 Butterfield, D. 182 Calder, A. 114–6, 123, 126, 129n22, 175, 179, 182 Campanella, T. 72

Capitoline Museum, Rome 15, 16, 36n9 Centre d’Arts Plastiques Contemporains (CAPC), Bordeaux 177 Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC), Seville 176, 187–8 Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Brumadinho 162n19 Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga 186, 196 Centro de Arte y Naturaleza (CDAN), Huesca 191–2 Centro de Arte y Tecnología: Etopia, Saragossa 200 Cézanne monument, Paris 61, 67n29 Chiazera, P. 186 Chillida, E. 140, 143–4, 161n16, 171–2, 191, 203n23 Chin, M. 179 Christiansen, H. 75, 78 Clement XIII, Pope 15 Cleveland Museum of Art 110, 119 Colombe monument, Paris 58, 67n27 Combas, R. 193 Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston 179 Corot monument, Paris (today in Avray) 58, 59, 67n27 critical museology 3, 197, 204 curatorial professionalism 31, 33 Danto, A. C. 11 De Chirico, G. 11 DeCordova Museum and Sculpture, Lincoln 129n24, 187 decorum 13, 47, 52 Denver Art Museum 175, 182 Detroit Institute of Art 110 Dickie, G. 167 Dubuffet, J. 175

222

Index

Dujardin-Beaumetz, E. 53, 57–60, 107 Dürer monument, Nuremberg 44–5, 63n5 Einar Jónsson Museum, Reykjavík 85 Es Baluard, Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo, Palma de Mallorca 196 Eskulturen Museoa, Santurce 151 Etty monument, York 56–7, 66n23 Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland 177 Filarete (Pietro Averlino) 72 Flanagan, B. 182 Foucault, M. 4, 6, 7 Frederick II, king of Prussia 43 Frémiet monument, Paris 60, 66n25 Fuchs, G. 77 Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon 123 Fundação Serralves, Porto 129n26 Fundación NMAC Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo, Véjer de la Frontera 162n19 Füssli or Fuseli, H. 15 Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin 115 Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome 117, 197, 203n26 Garay monument, Bogotá 67n31 garden cities 87–90 Garnier, L. 43 Gaudi, A. 82 Geddes, P. 92 Gemeentemuseum, The Hague 115–6 Gérôme monument, Paris 53–4, 65n17 Getty Centre, Los Angeles 96, 182 Giacometti, A. 118, 123, 126 Glyptothek, Munich 30 González, C. 187–8, 202n18 Gormley, A. 186, 187 Goya monument, Madrid 55–6, 62, 66n19, 66n20, 67n30 Greiner, D. 78 Gropius, W. 87, 89, 120 Guggenheim Museum, New York 115 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao 183–4, 191, 202n17, 203n22, 203n23 Habermas, J. 3, 14, 15 Habich, L. 75, 76, 78, 97n7, 97n11, 97n12, 97n13 Handel monument, London 43, 63n1

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo 124 Haring, K. 182, 201n7, 202n15 Harlingue, A. 83 Harris, K 158 Heatherwick, T. 170 Heizer, M. 172 Henri, Y. 193–4 Hilmar, J. 169 Hirschfeld, C.C.L. 43 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC 118, 200n3 Hoetger, B. 79–81, 98n16 Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC 170 Holzer, J. 203n22 Houdon monument, Paris (today in Lixieux) 58–9, 67n27 Howard, E. 87–91, 99n29, 100n34 Hugh Lane Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin 177–8 Indiana, R. 177 Indianapolis Museum of Art 177 institutional critique 7, 166–8, 176, 200n2, 200n3, 204 Instituto de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia 197 Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 182 Irwin, R. 172 Jardin de l’Infante, Paris 21, 23, 37n18, 49–53, 58, 65n16 Jay, M. 17 Jetelová, M. 197 Julio Antonio monument, Madrid 61 Kapoor 202n17 Karavan, D. 169, 201n5 Kiley, D. 117 Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth 118, Kirkeby, P. 192–3 Koons, J. 183, 202n17 Krauss, R. 167 Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg 197 Kunstlerkolonie or artists’ colony 72, 75–7, 83, 85–6, 97n8, 97n9 Kunstmuseum, Bochum 168–9, 192 Lacy, S. 190 Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-uponTyne 170

Index Lauweriks, J.L.M. 86–7, 89 Le Corbusier 93–4, 111–4, 129n18, 129n19, 129n20 Lefebvre, H. 123 Legion of Honour Museum, San Francisco 110 Lenepveu monument, Angers 60 Lenoir, A. 21, 44 Lichtenstein, R. 194, 197, 202n11 Lipchitz, J. 111, 114, 117–8, 122, 129n22 Loggia dei Lanzi or della Signoria, Florence 17–19, 36n11, 39n34 London Museum or Egyptian Hall, London 28 López Cuenca, R. 176 Los Angeles County Museum of Art 115, 168, 172 Louis Philippe, king of France 25 Louisiana, Humlebaek 122 Ludwig Museum, Cologne 169–70 Luigi Pecci Centre of Contemporary Art, Prato 170 Lun, K. 194 Lynch, K. 102 Macedo, D. 109 Maeght Foundation, Saint-Paul de Vence 95, 123 Malraux, A. 62, 65n15, 123, 126n2 Mann, T. 71 Mansart monument, Paris 57, 67n27 Marforio fountain, Rome 15 Mariemont, Morlanwelz 82 MARTA Museum, Herford 186 Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt 72, 74–82, 86, 97n10, 98n16, 98n18, 98n19, 99n20 MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome 198 Meissonier monument, Paris (today in Poissy) 52, 65n15 Metz, C. 17 Metzendorf, G. 87 Middelheim Open Lucht Museum, Antwerp 120–3, 135, 145 Millais monument, London 56, 66n22 Milles, K. 84 Milton, J. 71 Minneapolis Institute of Art 199 Miró, J. 118, 123, 124, 144 Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana 115 Moderna Museet, Stockholm 115

223

Mont des Arts, Brussels 92 Montereau monument, Paris 58, 67n27 Moore, H. 115–16, 118, 120, 123, 126, 179 Mora, P. de 176 Moraza, J. L. 172 More, A. 72 Morellet, F. 192 mountainous conspicuousness 71–2 Müller, A. 79–81 Mulvane Art Museum, Topeka 198 Murillo monument, Seville 45–8, 64n6 Musée d’Art Ancien, Brussels 118 Musée d’Art Contemporain (MAC), Marseilles 173–4, 201n9 Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-deMarne (MAC-VAL), Vitry-sur-Seine 175 Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon 173, 177, 192–3 Musée d’Art Contemporain, Strasburg 182 Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Saint-Étienne 182 Musée d’Art Moderne, Villeneuve d’Asq 170 Musée de sculpture à plein air de la Ville de Paris 145 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montréal 194 Musée des Monuments Français, Paris 21, 44 Musée du Louvre, Paris 19–25, 36n14, 36n15, 36n16, 37n17, 37n18, 37n19, 37n20, 37n21, 37n22, 37n23, 38n24, 38n25, 38n26, 38n27, 38n28, 38n29, 38n30, 102 Musée du Luxembourg, Paris 4, 102–5, 109, 110, 126n3, 127n4, 127n5, 127n6 Musée Rath, Geneva 200n3 Musée Rodin, Meudon 83–4, 99n23, 99n24, 99n25, 108 Musée Rodin, Paris 5, 84, 106–8, 110 Museo a Cielo Abierto del Barrio de San Julián, Teruel 157 Museo a Cielo Abierto en San Miguel, Santiago de Chile 157 Museo a Cielo Abierto, Valparaíso 156 Museo al Aire Libre, Ceutí 152 Museo All’Aperto Carlo Bilotti, Cosenza 154 Museo Civico di Castelvecchio, Verona 179

224

Index

Museo d’Arte Urbana di Torino, Turin 157 Museo de Antioquia, Medellín 185 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bogotá 184, 195 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Monterrey 182 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile 182 Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá 184 Museo de Arte Moderno, Cartagena de Indias 184 Museo de Arte Moderno, Madrid 61, 127n7 Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City 124 Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago de Chile 196 Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao 172 Museo de Escultura Abstracta al Aire Libre, today Museo de Arte Público, Madrid 139–45, 161n11, 161n12, 161n13, 161n14, 161n15, 161n16, 161n17 Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre ‘Andalucía’, Aracena 149 Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre ‘V Centenario’, Huelva 149–50 Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de Alcalá de Henares 150 Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de Cáceres 151 Museo de Escultura Contemporánea al Aire Libre, Hecho 138–9 Museo de Escultura y Pintura al Aire Libre, Serrada 151 Museo de Escultura, Leganés 153 Museo de las Esculturas Urbanas del Mundo (MusEUM), Providencia 148 Museo de Pintura al Aire Libre, Candás 157 Museo del Prado, Madrid 32–4, 39n38, 39n39, 39n40, 40n43, 48, 54–6, 201n5 Museo di Arte Contemporanea all’Aperto, Luicciana 148 Museo di Arte Contemporanea all’Aperto, Maglione 148 Museo di Arte Contemporanea all’Aperto, Morterone 148 Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid 126

Museo Lapidario, Verona 26, 38–9n31 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid 176, 191, 196, 202n11 Museo Pablo Gargallo, Saragossa 186 Museo Pagani, Castellanza 123 Museo-Centro Vasco Artium, Vitoria 191 museography outdoors 121–3, 136–8, 148–53, 177, 189, 192–3, 196 Museo-Parque de Esculturas de Providencia, Santiago de Chile 146–7 Museu Brasileiro de Escultura e Ecologia (MuBE), 147 Museu d’Art Contemporani (MACBA), Barcelona 171 Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte 115 Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo 124 Museu Internacional de Escultura Contemporânea, Santo Tirso 147 Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund 115 Museum Folkwang (today Osthaus Museum), Hagen 86 Museum Folkwang, Essen 90 Museum Fridericianum, Kassel 29, 90, 167–9, 180 Museum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo 121–3 Museum Moderner Kunst (MuMoK), Vienna 198 Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver 3, 194 Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Denver 194 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sao Paulo 124 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sidney 194 Museum of Contemporary Art, Teheran 126 Museum of Fine Art, Houston 114, 118, 179 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 109 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York 4, 112, 129n16, 129n17, 190–1 Museum of Outdoor Art, Englewood 148 Museum of Public Art, Baton Rouge 158 Museum Park of Arts, Moscow 148 Muzej uličneumjetnosti (MUU), Zagreb 158

Index Nakaya, F. 202n17 Nannucci, M. 177 National Gallery, London 27, 199 National Gallery of Art, Athens 126 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 194 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 194 National Gallery, Oslo 118 National Gallery, Washington 118 National Maritime Museum, Greenwich 199 National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo 113, 124 Nationalgalerie, Berlin 30, 39n35, 104, 127n7 Natoire, C. 16 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City 117 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin 116, 117, 172 New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York 177, 199, 203n27 Niemeyer, O. 95, 115 Nierhoff, A. 170 Noguchi, I. 118 Noja, P. 149–51 nouvelle muséologie 133, 137, 147, 190 Oakland Museum of California 118 Olbrich, J.M. 74–79, 82, 96n5, 97n7, 97n12 Open Air Museum, Hakone 124–5 Opie, J. 177–8 Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) 198 Osthaus, K.E. 72, 85–90 Oteiza, J. 171, 191 Otlet, P. 92–3 Paladino, M. 182 Palissy monument, Sèvres 60 paramuseal monuments 5, 18, 33, 39n41, 204 Philadelphia Museum of Art 109, 119, 179 Picasso, P. 61, 111, 115, 124, 136, 142, 202n16 Pollard, J. 27 Pompidou Centre, Paris 146, 165–6, 174–5, 187, 196 Portland Museum of Art 177, 194 Poussin monument (today in Andelys) 58, 60, 67n27

225

Prantl, K. 135, 138, 160n4 Puget monument, Paris (today in Marseilles) 58–9, 67n27 Puryear, M. 182 Raffet monument, Paris 50, 58, 65n13 Ray, C. 186 Raynaud, J.P. 174 Raynaud, P. 202n10 Riehl, W.H. 73 Rilke, R.M. 83–5, 108 Robert, H. 16, 21–4 Rodin, A. 5, 60, 82–3, 99n23, 99n24, 99n25, 102–3, 105–10, 116–8, 120, 122, 124, 127n8, 127n9, 127n10, 128n11, 128n12, 128n14, 179 Rohe, M.van der 113, 114, 116 Rondinone, H. 177 Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp 201n5 Rubens monument, Antwerp 44, 63n4 Rückriem, U. 192 Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken 170 Sanskar Kendra Museum, Ahmedabad 113 Santoro, V. 177 Schongauer monument, Colmar 45 Schopenhauer, A. 43 Schütte, T. 180 Scurti, F. 175 Seattle Art Museum 180, 200, 202n13 Seim, A. van 182 Sempere, E. 140, 144 Serra, R. 170, 191, 197, 203n22 Shapiro, J. 170 Shonibare, Y. 199 Singapore Art Museum 187 Sixtus IV, Pope 15, 36n7 Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten, Marl 189 Soriano, J. 182 Spagnulo, G. 192 Staccioli, M. 197 Stadtkröne or city crown 72, 87–89, 91, 204 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 119 Stolyarova, A. 158 Street Art Museum of Amsterdam (SAMA), 158 Street Museum of Art (SMA), New York 159

226

Index

Suvero, M. 190 Szoborpark Múzeum or Memento Park Museum, Budapest 148 Tate Modern, London 196 Taut, B. 72–4, 85, 89, 90, 100n31, 100n32 Thorvaldsen monument, Rome 67n28 Tischbein the Elder, J. H 29 Tramullas, P. 138–9 Tuileries, Paris 18, 19, 25, 36n16, 49, 102 Turquet, E. 105 Uffizi, Florence 17–18, 36n10 Van Dyck monument, Antwerp 56, 66n21 Vancouver Art Gallery 193–4, 200 Veilhan, X. 187 Velazquez monument, Madrid 54–6, 66n18

Velazquez monument, Paris 49–51, 60, 67n26 Vigeland Museum, Oslo 109, 119 Villeneuve, D. 43 virtual museums 6 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 42 Vostell, W. 168–9 Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis 114 Watteau monument, Paris (today in Valenciennes) 58, 67n27 Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg 201n5 Wright, F. L. 93, 95, 151 Wurm, E. 173 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton 162n19 Zadkine, O. 120 Zocchi, G. 18 Zuloaga monument, Bilbao 62