Rowan Moore

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The New Art Gallery Walsall

Rowan Moore

Synopsis:
A stunning book documenting a truly extraordinary building. The New Art Gallery Walsall is perhaps the most successful of the many art-oriented projects funded by the Millennium Fund. A run-down post-industrial town in England's Midlands is the site of a quite fantastic building: a massive terracotta and steel clad structure, enigmatic and subtle, within which is a complex series of galleries and rooms, ranging in scale from the domestic to the stately, part of which houses a remarkable art collection, the work of Jacob Epstein's wife and an American sculptor friend. The gallery itself is the result of a long and arduous campaign orchestrated by its director, Peter Jenkinson, raising funds and motivating a large team of people to realize this extraordinary project. The architectural competition to design the building was won by a young practice, Caruso St. John, whose previous work had all been at a much smaller scale. During the building process an ambitious program of public art projects was put in place, involving the people of the town throughout. The finished building has been lavishly praised, and occasionally damned—strong reactions are universal. This book documents in great detail the building, its context in the town and the politics of the place, all illuminated by Hélène Binet's remarkable photography. The first monograph on the work of a very fashionable architectural practice. Beautiful photography by Hélène Binet: 130 photos, most in color or duotone.

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Other editions: Softcover - 2009, Hardcover - 2000, Softcover - 2000, 1997