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July 4, 2007
I wasn't able to attend the talk on June 28 by Andrew Andersons, Principal Architect, PTW Architects, where the plans for the first stage of the National Gallery of Australia's building enhancement project were presented and discussed the issues involved in designing a building around the art it displays.
 As I understand it from the media release, after financial approval from the Federal Government was given, the new extensions will include new Australian Indigenous galleries and a new home for the famous and popular Ned Kelly series by Sidney Nolan. They will also feature a multi-purpose space for educational activities and events.
The function room will open onto a new Australian Garden. Stage 1 also includes a street level entrance, shop and facilities. The improved visitors' facilities were especially welcome, they said. In another new feature the Aboriginal Memorial Poles will be on display in a new purpose built display area inside the Gallery's main entrance.
Will it soften Colin Madigan's modernist brutalism?
There is a strong sculptural look to the façade of the building:
 I cannot tell from the PTW flash show---what I see is lots of glass, concrete and light and a great big shimmering glass wall/thingy across the front.
I presume that it is another modernist block so loved, and celebrated, by the art institution. I don't know why. Elitism? Opposed to dumbing down?
Madigan himself sees the leaky building as a most important work of modernist art and sees changes to it---including altering the internal disposition of spaces-- as desecrating it.
However, as Betty Churcher points out:
The big, main hall of the gallery was vast, and had really been designed with its concrete walls and its great, you know, cathedral spaces, for large American painting.'m, I'm convinced of that. It was designed as if that was going to be the art of the future, and of course it turned out that it wasn't.... Because on the cement, the grey cement, the cement was very light absorbent. The light was coming from that huge height. By the time it got down to the picture, it was exhausted.
The Gallery does not even have a proper space for people to congregate--apart from the coffee shop--- and it's an uncomfortable labyrinth to be in.
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Gary - whats your camera specs?