Review of Akron Art Museum from NYC

This blogger definitely has no understanding or appreciation for art.

The Architecture Review in the New York Times by Nicolai Ouroussoff seems by our reading to be saying that the new Coop design is teriffic in reflecting “an exuberant spirit of invention and openness.” But says “Unfortunately, that spirit stops at the gallery doors.”

What really disturbs the reviewer is the “ugly brick-clad parking deck across the street (the new library building) This he says is “the dark side of the America recalled by Robert Venturi: a haunted Main Street U.S.A. of decrepit brick buildings, vacant windows and empty storefronts.”

For our viewers outside the Akron area we include this photo of the new museum. To read the full review which has high praise for the added architecture, click on the headline. Here are the lead paragraphs:

AKRON, Ohio, July 9 — The new addition to the Akron Museum of Art underscores how hard it can be to strike a balance between daring architecture and enjoyable spaces for viewing art.

Designed by the Vienna-based Coop Himmelb(l)au, the building’s crystalline exterior and lobby, with their cascading sheets of glass, reflect an exuberant spirit of invention and openness.

Unfortunately, that spirit stops at the gallery doors. After the initial euphoria of taking in the big public spaces, the galleries feel surprisingly drab. You’re left with the deflating impression that the client and the architect experienced a failure of nerve at the moment that mattered most.

The old museum, housed in a 19th-century Renaissance Revival building that once served as a post office, stands on a commercial strip facing an ugly brick-clad parking structure in downtown Akron. This is the dark side of the America recalled by Robert Venturi: a haunted Main Street U.S.A. of decrepit brick buildings, vacant windows and empty storefronts.

Coop Himmelb(l)au treats this history with just the right amount of respect, neither trying too hard to fit in with it nor begrudging its importance. The collection is divided into two parts, with late-19th-century and early-20th- century art housed in the old building and later-20th-century and contemporary art and photography displayed in a new one-story rectangular aluminum-clad slab just to the south.