Museum architecture

Museum architecture has been of increasing importance over the centuries, especially more recently.

A challenge for museum architecture is the differing purposes of the building. The museum collection must be preserved, but it also needs to be made accessible to the public. Climate control may be very important for the objects in the collection.

History

An early example of architecture for a purpose-built museum is the Museum of the History of Science building in Oxford, England, originally built to house the Ashmolean Museum.

In the 20th century, museums have been combined with war memorials to serve multiple purposes. The Australian War Memorial in Canberra, for example, is a place of commemoration as well as for collection and display. It contains a museum, an archive and a shrine. It was designed by Emil Sodersten and John Crust in a contemporary neoclassical style reminiscent of Lutyens with detailing influenced by Art Deco.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, USA (opened in 1959), by Frank Lloyd Wright is an important architectural landmark and icon of the 20th century. Another classic 20th century example of iconic museum architecture is the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain by Frank Gehry (opened in 1997). Gehry has undertaken many major museum architecture projects, including the Experience Music Project in Seattle, USA, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, USA, the Vitra Design Museum and MARTa Museum in Germany, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

Museum

A museum (/mjuˈziːəm/; myoo-zee-um) is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public. The goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public.

Some of the most attended museums include the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the British Museum in London, the National Gallery in London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums and children's museums.

Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind (born May 12, 1946) is a Polish-American architect, artist, professor and set designer of Polish Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect. His buildings include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, the extension to the Denver Art Museum in the United States, the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin, the Imperial War Museum North in Greater Manchester, England, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, Germany, the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Wohl Centre at the Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. His portfolio also includes several residential projects. Libeskind's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Bauhaus Archives, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Pompidou. On February 27, 2003, Libeskind won the competition to be the master plan architect for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.

Jewish Museum, Berlin

The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin) is one of the largest Jewish Museums in Europe. In three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind, two millennia of German-Jewish history are on display in the permanent exhibition as well as in various changing exhibitions. German-Jewish history is documented in the collections, the library and the archive, in the computer terminals at the museum's Rafael Roth Learning Center, and is reflected in the museum's program of events. The museum was opened in 2001 and is one of Berlin’s most frequented museums (almost 720,000 visitors in 2012).

Opposite the building ensemble, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin was built – also after a design by Libeskind – in 2011/2012 in the former flower market hall. The archives, library, museum education department, and a lecture hall can all be found in the academy.

Princeton economist W. Michael Blumenthal, who was born in Oranienburg near Berlin and was later President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of the Treasury, has been the director of the museum from 1997 to 2014.

Jewish museum

A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jewish people and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.

Notable Jewish museums include: