Teylers Museum: a time machine

Teylers Museum: a time machine

At the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, reputedly the first and oldest museum in the Netherlands: interesting building, eclectic collection, typical of earlier times. I have the feeling of going back in time, not just because of the old, rather worn building with its sloping wooden floors and the old-fashioned cabinets that remind me of my school back in the middle of the 20th century.





What really takes me back are the yellowing, type-written or calligraphically handwritten cards and labels next to the exhibits in the cabinets - true remnants of a bygone era. It used to be like that, people made everything themselves, using what they had: scraps of paper, pens, typing machines - and we all thought the results were great.





Nowadays even the most incompetent computer user can produce results that would have been of the highest professional level back then, using fonts and clip art, colour and all kinds of effects. Our possibilities have grown explosively but I wonder if the same applies to our capacities. Nowadays there are too many machines between us and what we make, layers of mediation that attenuate feedback and make procedures even more prescriptive. If they ever replace the old labels and cards at Teylers Museum, I don't think I'll come back for another visit.

Failing the physical

Failing the physical

A fellow architect and university professor was talking to me about a lecture she'd attended. It was by some big shot from the museum world, whom she had found extremely knowledgeable and intelligent but at the same time irritating. I listened to her account and counterarguments why the big shot had it wrong but soon I drifted off. All I was hearing was differences of opinion concerning symbolic interpretations, semantic aspects, digitisation and various meta-matters. I compared these to my own recent experiences at museums and realised that this particular architectural debate was far removed from the physical reality and human interaction with it. It felt as if architecture had abandoned the physical environment, as if it no longer posed a challenge, as if everything there had been solved and architects had to move on to higher things.

Unfortunately, that's not the case and quite probably will never be. The built environment is far from what it should be in terms of behaviour and performance. It costs too much and delivers comparatively little. In museums, engineers may have managed to solve lighting, humidity and other technical problems but interaction with the resulting environment is often disappointing. Visitors may still experience glare when viewing a painting, may even have trouble finding a decent point from where to view a painting (just try to do so in front of one of the major masterpieces in any museum), circulation can be irritating, orientation can be a problem etc. Architecture hasn't moved on from those issues, it has failed them.

Museum Kaap Skil, Texel

Museum Kaap Skil

Texel has long been a popular tourist destination and it's bound to become even more popular now that international tourist guides seem to promote it. In many aspects, Texel is indeed a special place but in others it's just like the rest of the Netherlands. The village of Oudeschild must have been an interesting place in its heyday in the seventeenth century but today it's not the most attractive of places. It's just like any modern Dutch village, with a tiny centrum comprising the usual shops for the locals and, if there's a chance of tourists coming along, a couple of shops for them to buy souvenirs.

The surprise in the centrum of Oudeschild is the striking yet simultaneously discrete facade of Museum Kaap Skil. A few hundreds of wood slats placed vertically in front of a curtain wall, cut in an irregular shape that reminds of a roofline manage to attract attention without imposing the building on its immediate environment. The inside is similarly pleasant and quite understated, with lots of light coming in filtered by the slats. Nothing much happens in the building itself, although it's worth a visit, especially with children. Just don't get into details on the exhibits: the system of ledgers and drawers they use in the museum doesn't work well.

The open-air part of the museum, comprising a few cottages, workplaces and an interesting collection of flotsam and jetsam is a nice touch and contrasts with the rather cramped and chaotic interior of the museum but in all, the building itself is probably one of the better designs by Mecanoo.

Prado revisited

Prado revisited 

Back in 1978 I'd spent a couple of joyous days at the Prado Museum. It was my first time at a major art museum and the opportunity to study at close proximity (they used to be less protective of artworks back then) so much stuff I'd seen only in small, often greyscale photographs was fascinating. This autumn I went back to Madrid and took the opportunity to revisit the Prado. The visit gave rise to mixed feeling. On the one hand, the collection still enthuses me. Being able to observe the real paintings reveals so much. Once again I admired how Greco makes me look towards the heaven with his multitiered religious compositions but also how he worked the outlines of his figures. Goya is an undeniable master of composition and mood but there seemed to be something wrong with the foreshortening of some arms and thighs, as if the limbs were slightly dislocated. Above all, Velazquez was the star of the visit: what a painter! I couldn't help admiring practically everything he has made.

On the other hand, the building could have been much better. It's not only that the crowds are not facilitated at critical points like the thoroughly disappointing entrance where brusque staff herds and hurries them, there were also few rooms in the museum where visitors could form some overview of their meanderings in relation to the galleries. Everyone relied too much on their little floor plans and still managed to pass the same rooms again and again. Of course, this gave opportunities to see stuff one might have missed the previous times, as the worst with the museum was that so many great works of art were positioned too close to each other, making me feel uncomfortable. There was precious little room and time to really appreciate each magnificent painting. One pace was often enough for something different to enter my field of vision and distract me from what I was enjoying, and in a crowded museum one can't often pick the perfect spot. So, while I'm thankful that they've gathered so much and made it available, I wonder why museums have grown into non-places: physical catalogues for quick browsing or physical swiping and do not afford a leisurely stroll through art.