Rapport 99-00_final - Canadian Centre for Architecture

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Wallis Miller Architecture on Exhibit At the start of my eight-month residency at the Study Centre, I expected to review the material I had gathered in Berlin during the previous year and a half and to begin a draft of the book. In the end, the wonderful surprises in the CCA collections as well as the time I had to review the Berlin documentation already at hand helped me to accomplish this and other aspects of my project, then called “Architecture on Exhibit.” The CCA Library collection contains much of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century bibliography on Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a central figure in my project. The first architecture museum in Berlin (and the second museum generally in that city) was dedicated to him in the 1860s. Investigating the establishment and the fate of the collection until it was packed away in crates in 1933 granted me access to the host of problems associated with creating exhibitions and museums of architecture and the various ways in which they were solved – or avoided – during the time when exhibitions were becoming increasingly popular. As a result of this work, I made a major change to the project. It is now called “Berlin’s Architecture Museum,” not to limit the scope of the book to museums, but because I think that the establishment of the Schinkel Museum, as well as other architecture museum projects in Berlin, is central to understanding efforts to put architecture on exhibit. During my time at the Study Centre, I completed a rough draft of one-third of the book – the section dealing with the Schinkel Museum. The talk I gave at the Study Centre in April 2004 was based on this material. Not only did the talk enable me to assemble disparate pieces of my research in the form of texts and visual material, but it (not surprisingly) afforded me the most responsive audience I have ever had. The comments of a combination of scholars, curators, and other CCA staff members sensitized me to issues of which I had been unaware, for example, 34 having to do with exhibitions as “portraits” of an architect and with the relationship between reproduced and original material. At the talk, I was also able to present some of the material from the collection. The most exciting piece on display (for me) was an album of photographs of Schinkel’s drawings from the mid 1860s. Probably collected because it is an early record of his work and of some drawings that are now lost or destroyed, the album was also a version of the photo albums on display in the first Schinkel Museum that opened in the studio space of his apartment in the Bauakademie. In Berlin, I had already found the letters in which the Minister of Culture gave the photographer, Laura Bette, permission to photograph the drawings and make six copies. These albums are most likely no longer in Berlin (I have done a search of the major locations that might have them). I found the album of photographs of Schinkel’s drawings in the CCA collection only by chance, after ordering all of the nineteenth-century books on Schinkel. Louise Désy, the curator of photographs, was of enormous help in identifying the photographs as mid nineteenth-century prints. While the cover is most likely from that period, it is clear that the book was subsequently rebound. Aside from the fact that it was simply breathtaking to see an object – and an unusual one – from the first Schinkel Museum (and to participate in actually discovering a new object that pertains to Schinkel), access to the album told me a great deal about how people saw his work and the order in which they saw it. While the photo album gave me visual access to the first Schinkel Museum, I also had the opportunity to work with one of the research assistants, Suresh Perera, to reconstruct digitally one of the rooms in a later version of the Schinkel Museum. Aside from concentrating on the Schinkel Museum, I also used the collections at the CCA to investigate architecture exhibitions in other countries during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Head Librarian at the time, Gerald Beasley, pointed me toward American and British sources, for example, the catalogues from M.I.T., which included descriptions of their “Architecture Museum” (study collection) and books about the RIBA library and the objects it contained. This, of course, helped me to think about another aspect of my research – the relationship between museums, libraries, and archives. I also had the chance to review the exhibition of architecture at the French Salons with the help of Megan Spriggs, who used the material in the CCA Library and provided me with a comprehensive inventory and an analysis of the displays of drawings and models from 1801 to 1857. Other researchers in the Library as well as my colleagues in the Study Centre often gave me assistance and advice, especially in the context of this comparative work. Finally, I had the opportunity to work on a smaller research project about Mies van der Rohe and exhibitions of his work in the United States during his lifetime. The CCA archival collections were extremely helpful in this respect. Megan Spriggs, whose experience working in collections was invaluable, again assisted me in finding the material and discovering new examples. The result of this research is a paper that has been accepted by the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. The CCA was the perfect place to work on an investigation of architecture exhibitions and museums. The comments and help of staff from many departments – the Library, collections, conservation, education, and the Study Centre – have helped this project on the paths necessary to enrich it and eventually make it a worthwhile book. 35
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Page 4 and 5: Tous droits réservés. La reproduc
Page 6 and 7: Membres du Comité consultatif Sylv
Page 8 and 9: Mot du directeur fondateur Le Centr
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Page 14 and 15: Katja Grillner École d’architect
Page 16 and 17: Activités scientifiques Le program
Page 18 and 19: 2 août 2004 Robert Kirkbride, cher
Page 20 and 21: Samuel D. Albert And Was Jerusalem
Page 22 and 23: Jean-Pierre Chupin La scène emblé
Page 24 and 25: Maarten Delbeke The Sacred History
Page 26 and 27: Jean-Philippe Garric Les modèles i
Page 28 and 29: Katja Grillner The Writing of Lands
Page 30 and 31: Robert Kirkbride Architecture and M
Page 32 and 33: D. Medina Lasanky Redefining Modern
Page 36 and 37: Amy F. Ogata Object Lessons: Design
Page 38 and 39: Timothy Rohan Postwar Urbanism in A

Rapport 99-00_final - Canadian Centre for Architecture

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