Anne Flanagan, General Manager of Exhibitions and Building Services
Adapted from a Lecture given at the New Asian Galleries Teachers' Preview,
Thursday, 30 October 2003
This is the topic I want to talk about this evening: A new light on Asia - the concept and development of the new Asian galleries.
On entering the Gallery tonight you have passed though a layered architectural chronology. When I think about this, it is unique for a State gallery (other than the Art Gallery of South Australia) for we are currently preoccupied with the international phenomena of new contemporary 'landmark' gallery architecture. For example, Federation Square in Melbourne and the soon to be opened Museum of Modern Art in Queensland - phenomenal buildings that announce themselves as architecture of our time. Yet here in Sydney we have a building that layers time: here we have a building that respects and celebrates its long history and carefully uses these spaces with its collections. Here the building and the collections reverberate easily with each other in meaningful ways and so we offer visitors a layered gallery experience.
I like that. As you enter Walter Liberty Vernon's vestibule with its decorative 'pattern-book' sandstone (the very ground of Sydney) you are making a transition from your outside worlds to an internal gallery space - it is a breather. The Vernon wing, located to the right as you enter the Gallery, houses, ever so gracefully, the British and European collections and also the well respected Australian colonial collections. It is hard to imagine these collections without their architectural envelope - those generously proportioned spaces - a sequence of grand rooms with their dados and cornices and beautiful parquetry floors.
Then you experience Andrew Andersons' 1970s and then late-'80s modernist extensions that house the Australian, then the contemporary international collections and the Aboriginal collections. Rigorous in their dimension and material - here we have a modernist suite of galleries for our modernist collections.
The 1990s Asian gallery
Esther and Trevor Hayter designed a beautifully discreet Asian gallery; it was a temple-like experience. Controlled light, timber ceilings, celadon green wallpaper, glass showcases - purpose-built for permanent display - and definitely no natural light. It was a beautiful, quiet, contemplative space that struggled to draw bigger audiences that were forever inhibited by the gridded entrance portico and the low, low light levels. One struggled to see.
Why a new Asian gallery; why Richard Johnson as the architect; what was the brief and what were the untold possibilities? Why not a new landmark building as Melbourne and Brisbane are evolving? Interestingly, from when the initial idea was first conceived (I am talking early 1996) the reality of Bilbao, yet alone Federation Square and this new, radical approach to the 'marketable' architectural icon, was just happening. Why did the Gallery choose to build a modest building on the footprint of the existing while it seems the world was craving new, radical architecture to announce and brand the new museum more boldly, more ambitiously?
Perhaps it was a reality check in Sydney; funding a new Asian gallery would be complicated and so it was. It took four years to achieve the $16.4 million via an unsuccessful Federation Fund application and then finally the successful State government allocation.
Edmund was firm on the idea of building on a single footprint; no, it would never be a separate building but firmly integrated into the Gallery collections and Gallery identity. He was right.
The architectural brief then, was for an identifiable architectural language that announced itself with clarity from the entrance level of the Gallery and also connected to the existing, lower (1990s) Asian gallery and all within the Gallery footprint. No easy brief.
It was time to rework and express the existing Asian gallery, while creating a new space above. And so the existing galleries have been transformed with a very simple scheme, using off-white painted walls rather than wallpaper, timber floors rather than carpet and, most importantly, light, with a view to the 140 year old Morton bay tree; and finally, a stair connection the new upper level gallery above.
What was the existing site for the new building? It was a raised, exposed platform that exhibited modernist sculpture for those who braved the outside winds away from the internal 'environmental calm' of the Gallery. And then there were those unbelievable views - the harbour to the north and the magnificent Morton Bay tree to the south and they defined the site for the new extension.
And what was the internal gallery experience to be? This was firmly guided in contrast to other Gallery spaces - no low concrete ceiling grids - what was needed was a lofty space, with flexible exhibition possibilities and that magic ingredient: light. And so started the idea of 'the light of Asia'.
Two architects presented: Andrew Andersons and Richard Johnson. Andrew's idea was to play with that notion of the Asian sensibility and to work collaboratively with an Asian architect. Richard Johnson was crystal clear from the outset - a glass lantern.
The lantern is an important image or symbol of Asia. The white, translucent, star-fired glass box counterpoints the gravity of Vernon's sandstone with a lightness and grace that responds to the poetics of nature. On a grey, cloudy Sydney day, the building can almost disappear and yet in the golden, evening light the building glows softly. This has become the image of the Gallery - the opening banners announce it boldly across the Vernon portico. So too, the lotus flower that connects the panels.
Richard Johnson's glass building
This elevated glass lantern is off-centre from the entrance court axis and reveals itself once you have 'walked the ramp'. You now enter the Asian gallery. It references that unique Asian sensibility of the oblique - the virtue of indirectness. The new Asian gallery reveals itself slowly; the moment of entry is protracted and expansive.
Internally, the configuration is based on a series of squares - the temple formula: first the sculptural platform, then a square, glass building cantilevered on its base, then a square entrance verandah and finally the inner square. I was somewhat nervous of the 'bleed' from the internal space to the outer and this we will need to resolve with the scope of temporary exhibitions. How do we install the contemporary works by Nam Jun Paik in January next year (2004) followed by Fantastic Mountains - a traditional painting exhibition from Shanghai?
After much discussion, the Gallery sought new ways to present the permanent collection in the new upper level gallery. The design resolution is to house the permanent collection, under the theme 'Faiths of Asia', in the perimeter verandah. The works are displayed on the northern verandah using diffused light so suited to the Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, yet the textiles and scrolls on the eastern and western verandahs are under controlled light, and finally to the central square - here is the changing exhibition gallery. Here is Dadang Christanto's They give evidence. This too was part of the brief - to create a highly visible, enticing entrance to Asia with a gallery for the permanent collection - China, Japan, South and Southeast Asia - and a flexible, temporary gallery for changing exhibitions - the central space.
And so we have the architecture - an exquisite glass lantern with its floating walls and diffused light - but what about the art?
Susan Freeman's interiors
Exhibition design is a slow, laborious task and this was entrusted to Susan Freeman who had so successfully transported the Buddha exhibition into a memorable reality. Laborious, for each work is scaled and drawn in plan and elevation - whether it be a 2 tonne red stone Buddhist Indian figure or a miniature votive Buddha; and so many works had to be located in purpose-built showcases with special lighting. Graphics and seating are so carefully designed and positioned for that moment of reverie and information ... the visitor experience. The challenge was to enable the visitor to make sense of a diverse collection, from the connoisseur wanting detailed information to the 14 year old wanting experience. No easy task, and compounded with the idea that Asian is not a unified whole!
And so the discussions raged - how to present the collection, how to expand the strengths of China and Japan and broadly locate it with Southeast Asia and with a contemporary moment? For too long the 1990s gallery had located Asia as a 'permanent', chronological display. It was impossible to display contemporary Asian art in such a context.
There was much discussion on interpretation - the roles of text and image - and for a time we toyed with using audio-visual in the lower gallery - images of tea ceremony, Samurai culture or Chinese literati taste. These are perennial debates in galleries. In the end we let the objects speak eloquently - with information provided in 'walk around' text panels in purpose-built seats. It's simple - but it seems to work. As I watched 9,500 visitors on the opening Sunday, who so easily found and entered the galleries and were able to see the objects for the first time in a new light with detailed information - it felt good. Those years of design, construction and argument had realised an important new wing to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
We look forward to your response. Best of all to me was dear Ganesha, at the entrance to the new gallery - god of wisdom and success and the remover of all obstacles, layered with offerings. Here was a key work in the collection in full daylight, loved and blessed by a public. It had for too long lived in the dark.
I firmly believe a new gallery is ever respectful of the object and the best museum architecture serves the object. I also believe that context is important - how the building is sited, how it relates to its ground, how it is seen. The moment of entry - it is to do with proportion, scale, openings, natural light and views - a connectedness of the gallery spaces, sightlines - how it is seen and felt.
Seeing Ganesha on the opening weekend, I knew we had gotten it right.
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