Discourses and voices on design are multiplying. Museums are no exceptions.
Consider for instance one European capital city like Vienna, where the MAK - Museum für Angewandte Kunst is acknowledged and renowned as a museum of design, but where other institutions – the Design Forum at Museum Quartier, the Möbel Museum, the Wien Museum and the Technisches Museum – also deal with design issues or display exhibitions on design.
Let’s start from the MAK. First of all, today the MAK is not just a museum of applied arts and design. Born in 1864 as Museum for Art and Industry – drawing inspiration from the South Kensington Museum in London – it underwent some changes in the nomenclature and in its policy during the twentieth century, and 1986 marked the beginning of the contemporary art collecting strategy. This new path came along with Peter Noever, then appointed new director of the museum, and who is CEO and artistic director since 2000, when the museum became a public scientific institution.
It is reported that Zaha Hadid (her designs are part of the permanent collection of the MAK) once said: «For me Vienna is unthinkable without Peter Noever’s MAK», and the genitive actually tells much about the role of Noever.
Certainly the MAK is not just Peter Noever, and ist policy is developed through a range of diverse activities, by a rich staff of curators and professionals. Yet it is hard to imagine how the museum would (or will) be without Noever. It is not far from true to say that since almost 25 years museum can be titled “MAK by Noever” – as long as the museum’s guide, edited by Noever himself and published by Prestel, is titled Vienna by MAK.
As one can read from Noever’s own website, he was a designer (in 1968, with Hans Hollein, he presented the “Svobodair” at the XIV Triennale in Milan) and a lecturer of design analysis at the Academy of Fine Art, in Vienna. From 1986 he became the main responsible for the state of the museum. He directed the renovation between 1988 and 1993, with the new permanent exhibition rooms redesigned by artists like Donald Judd and Jenny Holzer. In 1994 he founded the American branch of the MAK, in Los Angeles. Since 1995 Noever is the promoter and designer, with Sepp Müller and Michael Embacher, of the “collection of the 21st Century”, the Contemporary Art Tower, a former flak tower to be transformed in a centre for contemporary art, providing studios and workshops for artists in diverse fields. Indeed a man of many ideas and skills, he shows a close and strong relation to “his” museum: he is the author of texts on the website, the curator and author of exhibitions and catalogues; the museum’s guide opens and closes with photos of him, and the bookshop of the MAK not only sells many of his books but also postcards which portray him.
Noever’s statements are considered as «the essential pillars of the MAK’s unshakable design position»:
«Design is intervention, is change / Design raises questions. Design is goal-oriented action. Design sets things in motion / Design opens new spaces and perspectives [...] Design is a reflection of culture, is a genuine language of forms. / Design is both principle and process [...] Design is a permanent process of searching, finding, and dismissing solutions. / Design is to think.» (Peter Noever, Politik und Kunst. Eine Designstrategie / Politics and Art. A design strategy, Vienna 1980; website)
In the words of Noever the MAK «by nature sees itself as a laboratory of widely diverse discourses and extensive cultural narratives, as an international platform of progressive, socio-politically relevant artistic and art-theoretical intervention. The MAK: a vital, public, multimedia forum of science and research, literature, film, music, etc., a reserve of the visionary and utopian; for it is precisely in the midst of homogenizing, mainstreaming globalization that nomadic, nonconformist, resistant, risk-taking thought that radically pushes things to their limit becomes a necessary corrective. The normative forces of so-called “factual pressures” which always imply pressurized thinking is countered by the MAK with polytonality, plurality, and crossover practices. [...]» (in Museum in the Media – Media in the Museum. Materials of the Lecture of Boris Groys, Vienna, MAK, 2008, p. 8).
The MAK aims at being a “center for art”. While it still holds the abbreviated nomenclature referring to its origins as a museum of applied arts, the current registered name adds “Contemporary Art”.
So, what about design? Let’s have a look at some of the museum’s features.
(I apologize I cannot post any original photo, but the MAK is definitely not camera friendly. I will not add here considerations on this point. You can read a discussion on this topic on ArtFagCity)
Permanent galleries. A wonderful catalogue of pieces and some artists’ pictures.
«The reinstallation of the MAK’s permanent collection and redesign of the gallery spaces by contemporary artists was the first experiment to be realized in the course of the Museum’s search for a new identity. Here, for the first time, one can sense what the notion of fruitful confrontation between traditional collections and new artistic trends signifies» (see website) Because «[o]bjective display is impossible in a museum» the MAK chose «to realize the viewpoints of significant contemporary artists» (Donald Judd, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Bloom, Franz Graf, ecc.), under the art direction of Noever, who also designed some sections, like the attic, devoted to contemporary art.
How fruitful actually is this confrontation between art and collections?
When they were re-opened in 1993, after the four years refurbishment, undoubtedly the permanent galleries offered an unusual and fresh interpretation of exhibition design and collections, including design ones. Today, they are still worth the visit, though probably just once – but for single pieces one might wish to see again. At least, this is how I see them. In some rooms the appeal of the overall design, and some features of the artistic intervention, make seem the general look sufficient – the electronic display near the ceiling by Jenny Holzer, the gallery of Thonet seats’ silhouettes by Barbara Bloom…
Moreover, the concept of the galleries is not always clear.
It is probably true that many people hate to read in museums, as Holzer noted (see website), but there are also people who like to read and get deeper information on what they see. This is one of the reason why people visit museums. While some rooms also offer an introductory label, written by the curator, portable captions are available in every room, yet they provide very little information, not enhancing curiosity nor connections and imagination.
The most part of them looks like the following:
48. Cigarette box, ca. 1910
Design: Josef Hoffmann
Mother-of-pearl and ivory veneered
W.I. 1064/1912
Some others offer additional information, of the kind that can interest the passionate collector or the auction addicted:
47. Cutlery, 1904-08
Design: Josef Hoffmann
Silver, steel
Go 2009/1967
This set of cutlery, designated “the flat model”, was made for Lili and Fritz Wärnerdorfer (LFW), and ranks as one of Hoffmann’s most radical designs. These most simple of eating utensils appear to have been punched out of a metal sheet, some of them bent into shape afterwards, according to their function. The “primitiveness” is somewhat offset by the four spherical elements at the end of the handles, and through the monogram. This model was condemned by contemporary critics.
Why was this model of cutlery condemned? Why the author talks about “primitiveness”, or why can we talk in these terms of such pieces? Which other designs, among those on display, should we look at to understand how radical Hoffmann was? But, “radical” compared to what? Why simplicity can be read as radical? No way to know, for the visitor, but to buy books or catalogues on Hoffmann and the WW.
However, permanent galleries by artists are not the only chance to see and learn about design at MAK.
Studio collections. In the basement the «MAK displays a selection of its numerous possessions in an arrangement that is specific to the material and technology of the objects and that correspondents with the specialization of the director of each collection.» Here, differently from the galleries, objects are not supported nor interpreted via artistic intervention; rather they are almost left alone, offered as apparently naked pieces, just introduced with a label by the curator. For instance, in the Seating Furniture room, Christian Witt-Dörring writes: «Part of our material memory is located in this room. Is it only a collection of arbitrarily selected household items or is it indeed history manifesting itself here as the totality of our awareness? To what extent do we still relate to these objects in a direct way? Or has an archive accumulated here of has beens, whose lowest common denominator comprises the classifications “museum quality” or “second hand”? [...]».
These questions advanced by the curator are very interesting, both for museum professionals and for visitors; as well as it is the point he makes about the chair as «the piece of furniture closest to the human being», on how it can force our posture or, conversely, conform to our body, thanks to its design. The fact is that nothing of the kind emerges from the display of all those silent seats hung on the wall or placed on pedestals. It’s up to the visitor (with his/her own background) to “read” and over-write the collection, to fill the gap, according to his/her interest and previous knowledge.
The Furniture study collection also include the reconstruction of the famous Frankfurt Kitchen by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. I will write again about this exhibit, in another post. Here I just would like to mention that, while they narrate the reconstruction process and part of the story of the original design, labels accompanying the exhibit do not investigate the social context where the kitchens were actually used and lived.
Temporary exhibitions. Temporary exhibitions on modern and contemporary design are organized both from the collections and as special events: searching the online archive of past exhibitions, since 1986 (website, under Exhibitions Review), one can get an idea of the topics.
Other special events. Besides the work of the Design Info Pool, the MAK recently started the new strategies project on design, in partnership with Departure, «a funding organization and point of contact for those active in the field of the creative industries» founded in 2003.
The program include lectures and small temporary exhibitions. I recently visited the Happy ending by the Austrian design group Walking Chair. Besides the temperature in this part of the building (like a stove), devoted to design, I could not under-stand the exhibition. It seemed to me one of those installations which may look great during their opening – when there is plenty of people, drinking and talking, and nobody actually talks much of what is on show, or conversely when curators and special guests are present to explain the deepest meanings of the display – but that tell little or nothing to the “average” visitor during the weekday. As I read afterwards from the website, the designers «created a colorful universe of original prototypes which break up the traditional order of things, reducing functionalism to absurdity». I do not mean their work is not interesting, yet the display was far from catching; I probably felt like somebody who, in the past century, met conceptual art for the first time in his/her life.
Again, fascinating and weird concepts can work as a hook, and can have their appeal. But as a visitor I would like to get more. Else I will probably turn away.
The universal and neutral museum does not exist, and it is important for each institution to take advantage of its past (i.e. diverse collections acquired in the past) and to pursue the vision of new paths. Of course, establishing and maintaining a specific identity imply selections and choices.
At the MAK design shares the roof with applied arts and contemporary art, and is comprised in the overall strategy the museum and its director have on arts and their role in contemporary society. As it is evident from collections and exhibitions, apart from architecture, main interest and concern are for furniture design, textiles, jewelry, etc.
But the MAK is not the only voice on design in the city of Vienna, as I will show in other posts.
