Quote:
Originally Posted by geomorph
Pedestrian, I have not seen the new addition to SFMoMa in person yet but from photos it looks like it is a challenging building to love. How do you feel about it?
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I can't say I "love" it but I think it is a good job of wedging a huge new wing into an almost impossible location. The Fisher Collection is quite large and the old space was already inadequate to show a fair portion of what the museum owned even before Fisher died so they needed the room and I would not like to have seen either the Botta building butchered or the collection split into 2 locations. I think I've read that combined the 2 buildings now have the largest amount of square footage of any North American modern art museum. That's believable to me because look at the thing--it's a high rise in itself, equivalent in height to 20 floors of the W Hotel next door.
Actually, from the side away from the Botta building--the side where you pretty much see just the Snohetta wing, I rather like it. From the other side, where you see it sticking up above the Botta building, not so much. One thing I definitely don't like is what they did to Botta's main entrance staircase. That blond-wooded Scandinavian look is fine for the new wing--Snohetta IS Scandinavian after all--but Botta's original entrance hall on the 3rd St side was appropriate to his building--polished stone--and quite grand whereas the wood looks out of place, even cheap (one might say "temporary"), to me.
I also bet the W doesn't like it much. 20 floors of their east-facing rooms lost any view at all. That must cut the nightly rate they can charge.
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