Giovanni Cortez

Prof. Anat Livshitz

Cont. Culture + Crit. Debates

May 12th, 2017

Final: New Millennium Museums

While the forces of globalization certainly reached a peak in the late 1990’s on the

industry art institutions, they are still relevant in the present moment, though manifesting

in a new way. Globalization is a complex phenomenon that can be defined in a number of

ways; the impact it has on art and architecture comes from the tension created between

the ways new technologies and concepts alter distinctiveness or what some may consider

a certain “locality”. These two opposing forces are directly linked to the development of

a structure pivotal to the way in which we perceive and experience art. The position of an

architect is one easy to see as troubled in this context, having to work with

aforementioned forces as well as to serve the responsibility to a certain location and it’s

culture. Still, I believe the weight of globalization lies in the with the spectators, those

experiencing architecture from the outside not only as a physical space, but also every

time they visit as a memory in their mind. Museums assume an identity that will always

be the way people evoke associations in accord with how that space looks/looked and

feels/felt. What happens in globalization, it means there are consequences on buildings

and where they are situated in the world. Though it is too complex to be simply labeled

“bad”; there is a degree of importance in adapting new technologies to sometimes

advance local cultures, while also means of coping to not isolate locality due to modern

development. What this paper sets out to do is delineate an origin for globalization within
art and architecture specifically, explore the phenomenon through the concepts of Terry

Smith, and question what exactly globalization means to the art institutions of the

Caribbean third world.

A fine starting point is to acknowledge that globalization is seemingly used in

infinitely many contexts by infinitely many people for infinitely many purposes. In that

way, the concept globalization is experiencing a form of globalization itself. Anthony

Giddens defines it as the intensification of worldwide social relations that link distant

places in such a way that local happenings are shaped by factors transpiring miles and

miles apart. In that definition, globalization resembles something like a conversation

where raising awareness is the link between one place to another. It is a process where

through interconnectivity and technology, life is becoming standardized everywhere.

There is a split reaction to globalization that looks something like anti-global and pro-

global. Art and architecture is no exception in this, where anti views it as the act of

increasing homogeneity, while the pro belief is that technology is the only real means of

producing diversity by which yields originality through some hybrid form. The former

(anti-global) puts emphasis on maintaining established architectural traditions and

identity. The latter (pro-global) is invested in using new forms of information/technology

as the necessary response to a constantly changing world in both needs and sensibilities.

Where art and architecture differ in a conversation of globalization than say anything else

is the way in which we connect with these structures; architecture works to depict the

philosophical and cultural identity of an art institute by putting it into material. There is

an implicit challenge to understand the work within a museum by our philosophical

understanding of the building’s design itself. Anti-global argues to safeguard these

elements, though of course the history of architecture is not absolved from the ways in

which it been implicit in erasure or an altering of an indigenous culture. It is worth

noting though who sponsors the pro-global category in the argument: corporations who

utilize architecture for branding purposes and governments for patriotic symbolism.

In Terry Smith’s work The Architecture of Aftermath, he makes a direct link

between the ways in which globalization’s effects on cities, especially those isolated by

it, resulted in what he calls “The Museum Boom”. He explains that at the end of the 20th

century, cities turned to culture to lead an economic and reputation recover. Just like that

culture was the business to be in and hence made the multi-billion dollar museum

building industry a worldwide phenomenon (Smith, 19).

A worldwide survey of art museum building, conducted in 2001, although far

from complete, listed eighty-four active projects. Thirty were either extensions or

substantive renovations, while fifty-four were entirely new museums or new

buildings near existing ones. Most were slated to emphasize contemporary art. In

eight cases, the cost was provided or was yet to be finalized. For the rest, over

$4.704 billion had been committed, at an average of $62 million per project,

mostly as estimates that everyone knew would be exceeded. (Smith, 19)

To echo the sentiments of MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry, museums emerged as the

primary civic building of the time. Museums became the new skyscrapers, where

institutions competed for who could create the most spectacular structure. The

assumption seemed to be that over elaborate architecture would mean bigger endowments

and then better collections. But as generally expected in this level of extravagance, the

museum buildings surpassed the importance of the art themselves. Smith makes the case
that while money was the facilitator, the real excitement was the contemporaneousness

art and design itself, not the currency. But I make the case that perhaps the actual

excitement was simply the excitement itself. He states that during the 1990’s, it seemed

that a “new museum opened, somewhere in the world, each month, while more and more

were commissioned (Smith, 20).” Seeing as the role of museum as an attractor is not

necessarily accounted by the income earned, but by the income earned around them in

local real estate and business growth, there was real incentive for people who had no

palette for contemporary art to see visit a museum. A visit to the MoMA suddenly

became an economic gesture; one that I think the current state of globalization we are in

has almost made rid of. Smith was right to argue that the boom time of the museum

building would come to an end with the focus of attention shifting elsewhere, that shift

being the evolution of a digital space for art; the white box in your handheld. Smith’s

concept of “Attractor Architecture”, and what that looks like now helps in understanding

the new force globalization has taken upon our conception of the “museum”, the art

institution.

Smith introduces the cases of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the

Guggenheim Bilbao. Describing them as “much-fabled” art museums, he states that the

two of them lack any piece that one would consider “must-see” neither do the collections

all together accumulate to make a “wonders of the world treasure house,” such as the

Louvre or the Met. To Smith, it’s obvious that the building itself is the main attraction.

Aptly named, that is the concept of “Attractor Architecture”. Museum structures as the

Bilbao come to represent more than the art that it houses; it is a reflection of

contemporary architecture as well. They demand pilgrimage because of what they

contain, and as an innovative work that can be the destination itself, what Smith calls “the

architecture of destination” (Smith, 26). My argument then again refers back to

globalization, not that it is no longer relevant, but that it has altered the form of this

framework, the basis of architecture as entertainment. What was specific to Bilbao was

that is encapsulated the grandness of contemporary art and embodied it in a very modern

way for the time. It was a branding choice for the Guggenheim and a perfect promotion

that translated the system or set of artistic practices upheld by them as an institution. It

almost worked to make all these abstract and complicated art concepts visual. It was now

something that people could see and they would travel to do so. There is a level of

spectacle to it, but one could ask where do we experience spectacle now? The home base

of spectacle has become the digital. While no one can argue the invaluability of

physically seeing something, I think technology and how globalization relates has

rendered a change. The conversation of the “museum boom” and the late 90’s model of

building in architecture is completely altered by the effect Instagram has had on us. How

bad do we need to see something if we can both see it in the comfort of our handhelds

and also access it at any given moment. People will still visit Bilbao every day for the rest

of it’s existence, but I think museums and the art world cannot be thought of in the same

way as tourism. Instagram may be able to navigate the art audience. I don’t know if it can

do the same with people who want to go on vacations, to see things just because.

I want to end this paper but eliciting some thoughts on globalization, still on art

and architecture, and how that functions in the Caribbean third world. Considering Puerto

Rico a place where the general disposition on art is very different than the continental

U.S., no more is it depicted that globalization has less to do with the “globe”, and more
with the west. When it comes to globalization effecting architecture, it entails not

interconnectivity, but the act of Westernization. Museum to museum, you either cannot

tell them apart from any other building in Puerto Rico or they resemble that of a

government building. This is undoubtedly connected to issues of resource and interest,

but I don’t think that the perception of art on the island can be undermined. The most

established museums, Museo de Arte de San Juan (a) and Museo de Arte de Ponce(b), the

buildings certainly don’t create a commentary on the work inside. I question how

globalization has changed anything there in these regards. Parque de Bombas (c), a

museum dedicated to firefights, while its not a art museum, does a little more visually,

though it could easily be mistaken for a restaurant. I can’t say I think globalization is

living up to it’s name in Puerto Rico, though I wonder if it can penetrate and bring about

a change, as pro-globalists swear by, to a somewhat dejected art institution nationally.

a.

b.
c.
 Works Cited

Smith, Terry. The Architecture of Aftermath. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2006. Print.