Four Museums

To commemorate the bicentenary of Antonio Canova’s birth, the Venetian authorities decided to have an extension added to the original museum, and they commissioned Carlo Scarpa for this delicate task. Scarpa composed a small, but highly articulated building that is in a strong contrast to the neo-Classical basilica. The subtly designed sequence of spaces is unique even among Scarpa’s so many extraordinary museum interiors as the architect was here in the rare position to compose the spaces as well as the placings of the exhibits. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is perhaps the most spectacular building of recent years. The building raised high expectations from the outset, as the central element in Bilbao’s comprehensive urban renewal programme. Its site between river, railway, bridge and new town makes it a symbol of the Basque metropolis that can be seen from a considerable distance. It is both the heart of the city and a testbed for the arts, representing both public presence and artistic change. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a unique collection of architectural works – among them the Caroline Wiess Law Building, comprising the original William Ward Watkin Building of 1924 and the 1958 and 1974 additions designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden created by Isamu Noguchi in 1986 – and now the Audrey Jones Beck Building by Rafael Moneo. Moneo has proposed a four-story facility directly facing the Law Building and connected to it via an underground walkway. The limestone building occupies the whole site, thereby reinforcing its urban character. Heinz Tesar’s buildings occupy a very particular place on the Austrian architectural scene. There is a creative imagination at work here, which always operates outside the scope of modern routine. The town of Klosterneuburg has become something like an artistic home for Tesar. The Schömerhaus, an office building whose huge oval central hall leaves convention far behind, and the Protestant church, which has a rounded floor plan like a tear-drop, were now followed by the impressive museum he has built here to house 4000 objects from the Essl collection, which includes the most important collection of Austrian art after 1945.