Collective Vision: Creating a Contemporary Art Museum

It is said that art reveals the heart of humankind, architecture the soul of civilization. This summer, heart and soul will merge in the new building for Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. Designed by famous Berlin architect Josef Paul Kleihues (his first U.S. commission), the new MCA stands beside both celebrated Michigan Avenue and the city's stunning lake shore.

This book examines the entire process of starting and then dramatically expanding a contemporary art museum, from the tumultuous sixties to the cusp of a new century. The MCA's achievements, such as Christo's first wrapping of a public building (1969), Frida Kahlo's first U.S. exhibition (1978), and Jeff Koons's first full-scale museum exhibition (1988) are discussed, accompanied by historic photographs.

In his essay "Josef Paul Kleihues: Chicago and Berlin," art and architecture critic Franz Schulze considers the conceptual framework of Kleihues's design for the MCA, as well as the architect's adaptive reuse of the Hamburger Bahnhof train station to house Berlin's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Finally, color reproductions of 40 works from the vast MCA permanent collection are juxtaposed with informative text on more than 30 featured artists, including Francis Bacon, Leon Golub, Jasper Johns, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol.

The sum of these parts is a fascinating volume that thoroughly examines the very idea of an art museum according to its corresponding ideal: presenting, interpreting, and collecting the art of our time for a diverse audience.

The fundamentals involved in creating a contemporary art museum are presented both visually, in color photos, and in writing as contributors explore the founding of a new art museum in Chicago. While at first glance this production might seem exclusive to Chicago readers, look again: the description of the project from funding through building and representations within contrasts a variety of issues and approaches to making a museum, applicable to any such endeavor and to students interested in architecture. -- Midwest Book Review