SYDNEY — Seldom have I been as simultaneously impressed and underwhelmed with a museum renovation as I am with the new addition to Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the premier contemporary art museum in Australia and a beacon in this part of the world when it comes to the collection, display, and learning about the work of today’s artists.
Anyone who knows the history of this institution also knows what a miracle the redevelopment is. Less than a decade ago the MCA teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, with insufficient funds to pay its staff. Now it has the facilities that will not only secure its survival but ensure a strong and prosperous future.
The restraint, humility, and functionalism of the redevelopment is surprising and impressive, for it comes at a time when museums have increasingly sought star architects to make statement buildings designed to draw crowds. The dream is to get a world-renowned building like the Guggenheim Bilbao.
One difference, of course, is that the MCA is located smack on Sydney harbor, one of the world’s most lovely settings for a museum and a magnet for tourists, so it didn’t need to become a destination — it already is one. What the museum needed was a renovation that solved endemic circulation and access issues.
For the past 23 years the museum has been located in the old Maritime Services Board building, a 1950s Art Deco revival structure made of local yellow sandstone. It is like a sporting dais crossed with a mausoleum, a dull, forbidding modernist structure that in no way symbolized the kind of art that it was re-purposed to house.
The new design, by Sam Marshall, a Sydney architect, solves many of the structural problems of the old building. It does so in a simple but clever way — removing them from the old building and housing them in the new one, which is more of an access hub, or a service center, rather than a museum building proper.
Some may complain that from the outside the new building is not that much to look at, and they would be right. It is essentially a series of boxes clad in thin, large panels of precast painted concrete and glass. Walk around the building a few times and you can almost forget it is there. Review it from a harbor ferry, as I did, and it is equally humble.
The design’s symbolism, however, is more in keeping with the museum's content. At long last, at least, the place looks like a museum of contemporary art. Hopefully it will better attract crowds.
The new addition adds an additional 4,500 square meters of space, increasing the museum’s footprint by about 50 percent. There is only around 25 percent more exhibition space, surprisingly little given the renovation cost, AUD$53 million ($55.6 million), though entirely understandable given how great the museum’s needs were. In addition to three new galleries the expansion gives the MCA a new lecture theater, a proper entry and ticketing area, a much-needed and impressive education center with a dedicated room for children with disabilities, a rooftop sculpture terrace, a library, and revenue-generating restaurant and shop spaces.
The highlight of the new building is a big two-story box-like space on the entry level, which will be freely accessable to the public at all times. It is currently being devoted to Christian Marclay’s popular 24-hour video installation, "The Clock" (2010). Every Thursday the museum will offer a continuous 24-hour presentation of the work.
Alongside the new building, the refurbishment includes a remodeling of the old one. Marshall’s design is again simple but smart: He removed the staircase that zigzagged up the front right side of the building to create bigger, nicer, self-contained spaces on levels two and three, flowing around the old central utilities shaft.
The level two and three galleries are devoted to a pair of nice shows, one of works from the MCA collection that have hitherto languished in art storage and the other a group show of Australian and international artists. Works by Emily Floyd, Shaun Gladwell, Lindy Lee, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Robert Owen stand out from the crowd.
In the end, the success of institutions is all about the people in charge. Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the director, has done a terrific job of corralling various local government stakeholders to offer support. Demonstrating both leadership and generosity in a nation where such qualities are often hard to come by, banker and MCA board chair Simon Mordant and his family pledged $15 million. He is an antipodean Herodes.
Apart from the fact that it serves the art and artists, and makes the museum more accessible and fun, what I admire most about the redevelopment is the way in which it reframes the harbor and nearby Sydney Opera House from new angles, on all floors. It lets us rediscover this magical setting anew.
To see images of the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, click on the slide show.