Writing a weekly column is a good way to find your own soft underbelly. You know, the sensitive and vulnerable portion of yourself that leaves your guts exposed. For me, when people write letters in response to the column, either private or for publication, it's accusations that I've been unsupportive of local talent that cut to the core. Suggest that I'm
stupid or mean or both and if I still remember your comments at the end of the day, I'll giggle as I drift into peaceful slumber. If you've got something constructive and interesting to say, I'll toss one back in your honor, but if you accuse me
of failing the local community, I'll probably lie awake all night staring at the ceiling with hollow eyes wondering what I've done wrong.
When I complained about the city squandering an opportunity by not hosting a broader and more exciting competition-and spending more money-to ensure the new convention center be a piece of "destination" architecture, I received a letter from a local architect pointing out that, while a more exciting and innovative design would be most welcome, supporting an international competition was likely to leave locals out of it. Didn't I believe that Santa Fe had the talent pool to create an engaging and spectacular public building? I was depressed for weeks. Why hadn't I seen some path that would result not only in a showcase building for Santa Fe, but in a display of our local creative energy? Something along these lines pops up every couple months and throws me into, as Spalding Gray would have said, a slough of despond.
No more. I've just been cured courtesy of the rebuilt deYoung Museum in San Francisco. Years ago, when I was going to school in the Bay Area, the deYoung was a pleasant museum, if a bit stuffy and difficult to negotiate with its century-old spatial sensibilities and an eclectic but anticlimactic collection of objects, brave but no longer quite world-class. Certain death though, has given the museum a bigger, better and much more significant life. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake meant curtains for the museum's Golden Gate Park facility, but a commitment to rebuild encouraged a string of phenomenal gifts, rounding out the collections substantially in every facet, from ancient to contemporary, getting rid of any niggles about being world-class. All the museum needed was the funds for construction. But in 1995 and again in 1997 the museum narrowly failed to win a two-thirds majority in order to have a city bond finance the new digs. So, it went private. One hell of a capital campaign and $240 million later, a phenomenal stretch of elegant and enticing building houses the swollen holdings and the museum's board of trustees would gladly thank the citizens of San Francisco for failing to support it. Going private on funding meant years of begging gifts, but it also meant a newfound freedom. Public funds would have meant a long, lingering and painful "design by committee" with the inevitable effect of ruining any potential for interesting design-witness the New Mexico State History Museum. Private funding allowed an international competition, which was awarded to Swiss architectural firm Herzog and deMeuron (Albuquerque-based Antoine Predock was also a strong contender), and ensured the ultimate preservation of the architectural vision. Herzog and deMeuron's deYoung would never have been built if "the public" had been given a say in the matter, but that same public is now amazed by the museum and will be its beneficiary, through an economic and cultural boost to the entire region.
The building is a global destination, a marvel of engineering and flow, but also just plain choke-in-your-throat beautiful. Pulled low across the park and clad in divot-riddled copper sheets, it's a horizon unto itself with a wispy, twisting tower flexing up from one far corner and a cantilevered edge kicked out toward the famed Japanese Tea Garden. Inside, the museum encourages effortless wandering and fleeting glimpses across and through its physical span and its very different collections. It feels so right-and so unforced-to slip between the Oceania and African collections while spying a slice of Gerhard Richter's 30-plus-foot-tall permanent commission,
Strontium
, a baffling and mesmerizing grayscale puzzle of visual, scientific and physical resonance. There's an easy and timeless poetry to moving past a special exhibition of the Arts and Crafts era of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and through to an Andy Goldsworthy installation. It's plain good sense to install a James Turrel sky space as an intermediary between the museum and the Tea Garden. And the observation tower, which provides an exceptional view in a city bloated with majestic vistas, also adds the element that most museums lack: a way for people to look back out into their own community after looking into the culture and perspectives of so many others. The landscape architecture, by Hood Design, gracefully heightens, soothes and negotiates the building's tie with the park and the public. Everything works, and it works together.
In the middle of this remarkable vision, the result of an utter lack of input and compromise, I decided, "You know what? Screw the locals." To hell with public input as well. The public takes every input opportunity as a complaint opportunity. I can't remember the last time I went to a public meeting and someone walked in with constructive input. I don't mean to give up on locals-or the public-of course, or to say that Santa Fe doesn't have a huge well of talent, because it does. But having sophisticated creativity doesn't prevent a community from being provincial; welcoming input and inspiration from outside does. So, handicapping for geography is out and supporting fearless and exciting ideas is in as far as I'm concerned-I don't care if we have to import them from Kansas, New York or Antarctica. If we're not a community that can use external influences to motivate us toward our own excellence, rather than our own jealousy, then we're not much of a community. You may have a better idea than that superstar from out of town or be ready to put that SITE Santa Fe guest curator in his place, but don't complain to me about it. If you want to see change, Gandhi would have told ya, you've got to be change.
