REICON

This country-wide proposal came about through the abundance of scrutiny that museums have had to face during the rise in NFT/digital art popularity and the pandemic. These compounded conditions brought into question the role of the museum within the city. More is being demanded from museums than simply housing and displaying art, they have a role to play that their existing state seems to limit.
Through the study of past and existing museums we can begin to understand how museums understand their role in a city and their evolution through history. The museum typology has evolved through the centuries, beginning as curiosity cabinets held by the elite, to the peak of the typology with public museums such as Museo Pío-clemetino in the Vatican, and then their dissolution with the creation of contemporary museums like MoMA that are post-typological through their white dumpspace and flexible walls. This documentation of museum typology begs the question: what’s next?

This project proposes a new future for museums within the American landscape. With the existing institutions being modeled after European museums and collections, there is a disparity between museums and the communities that they reside in. Taking inspiration from Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham, the preservation of the existing conditions of the city is prioritized in order to create a culturally and physically accessible museum system. In order to do this with a substantial frequency throughout the country, soon-to-be decommissioned gas stations and fast food restaurants were chosen as sites for the new cultural institutions. This project takes this architecture and elevates the everyday it by encapsulating it in a building, similar to a cabinet of curiosities, while also grounding art by removing it from the current monumental spaces we recognize as museums.

RESEARCH ESSAY: