“I started to cry a bit when I saw the finished result for the first time this morning,” said architect Annabelle Selldorf at the June 27 press preview of the newly expanded Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Michael Conforti, director of the Institute, also teared up as he addressed the crowd gathered to celebrate the reopening after 10 years and $145 million of time and funds were invested into reconstruction. Visitors might have similarly emotional reactions to the results, including Pritzker-winner Tadao Ando’s multipurpose visitor center, which prioritizes circulation and the views of lush hills behind the Clark; landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand’s stepped pools , which create a peaceful setting primed for meditation; and Selldorf’s redesign of the main museum building’s interior, which glorifies the Clark’s collection.
Though thorough and comprehensive, the Clark’s transformation is decidedly understated. The refrain “Bilbao of the Berkshires” was used time and again over the weekend to describe the project, but that phrase isn’t really accurate. The Guggenheim Bilbao is a monumental, sculptural showpiece that draws attention away from the cityscape unto itself; the new Clark pays homage to the surrounding landscape with understated architecture and interiors that frame views of the neighboring hillside and the art on view.
The exterior is typical of Ando’s previous work for its veneration of the raw materials used to construct the building — concrete and granite, articulated in rectangular slabs, comprise both the structure and the adornment. The Japanese architect worked here with his trademark poured concrete panels, but also used granite for the first time. The pink-hued grey stone, taken from the same quarry where granite for the Clark’s 1973 Manton Research Center building was sourced, composes a wall that delineates part of the southern perimeter of the Clark campus and contrasts with the greenery directly behind it (Selldorf is also completing a renovation of the Manton Center, due to open in 2015). Ando's structure is equal parts stunning and subtle. Much the same can be said about Reed Hilderbrand’s work on the graduated pools that now flow at the center of the Clark Art Institute’s campus, where its parking lot previously stood. Subtle, too, is Selldorf’s work on the interior of the Clark’s main museum building, which houses the majority of its collection of decorative arts from the 18th and 19th centuries, Old Master paintings, and Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. By expanding pre-existing skylights and selecting contrasting, unexpected tones for the walls — deep plum, for example, backdrops a display of decorative silverware, which sparkles against the dark hue — Selldorf staged an overhaul so well suited to the site that the results appear neither new nor invasive. Behind the effortless appearance, however, lies a great deal of work. In the following interview, Selldorf spoke with ARTINFO about how she makes elegance look so easy.
How did the gradations of the hillside landscape and the variety of flora surrounding the Clark Art Institute influence your renovation work on the interior?
You can answer that question in two ways: You can say “Not at all” and you can say “A great deal.” Both are in some way true. This is a building that was built in 1955, so there was much existing in this building that remained unchanged. But what Michael Conforti did, which I think was wonderful, is that he brought all the design teams together to discuss how you would approach the building. Tadao Ando was, of course, the lead in introducing his design of the visitor center, and introducing the diagonal that is somewhat of his signature. By the time that I came on board, there wasn’t much discussion about that, but what was a discussion was about how the landscape around the building would be perceived. And while I don’t remember now who said what, when I look at the site today, when I see how seemingly effortless the gradation work around this building and around the Manton Research Center is, I think that that’s a really brilliant thing. What they did is they brought the Berkshires in, and the way that has consequences for the building is that these views out are really a wonderful counterpart to the experience of the Clark’s art.
That was always the goal, I’m sure, when Sterling and Francine Clark commissioned the building, but I’m sure it was much more pastoral in 1955, and there were a lot less requirements for parking and for amounts of visitors.
You mentioned the sort of seemingly effortless appearance of the exterior, but of course that’s also very much the case for the interior. One might go so far as to wonder what your particular signature in the spaces is, whether or not your footprint is visible here?
That’s a very big discussion every time you renovate and restore existing buildings. I worked on the Neue Gallery in New York, and in a way it’s a bit of a similar kind of thinking. I feel that when that is your task, the most important thing is to identify what is perfect, what is beautiful, what needs to remain as is. It’s equally as important to be critical and to be cognizant of what doesn’t work and why it doesn’t work. Did it never work? Was it meant to work in a different way? Did the conditions change? And to then understand how to articulate that.
In this particular case, Michael always said, “Are you sure you want this job? Because it’s not about you.” And I always thought that that’s a funny question, because I don’t think it’s ever about the architect. Mr. Ando might disagree with me, but this does not mean that you don’t have a personality or the confidence to make interventions. It’s just how you articulate them. And I believe that this is the same in all disciplines — it’s like how you make music, how you write literature, how you paint, how you articulate anything. I feel that this building is completely different from the way it was before. There’s now a very ready and pleasant experience of the building that allows the visitor to look at art. And that was never the case. This was never before a calm and quiet space of contemplation. But it was always something that was in some ways overwhelming, because there seemed to be so much art and looking at it was confusing. And bringing that kind of order, that articulation and calm, into the vocabulary of the interior, was a matter of using the same vocabulary — the mandate was not to build a new building and create new spaces, but to sort out something that already exists and already was much revered. It was loved for the collection, and it was loved for the idiosyncrasy of the presentation. I tried to, with a light hand, rejigger everything — that’s a technical term!
You mentioned that one of the steps that you took was to better articulate the ceilings and to modulate the experience of moving from dark-colored rooms with light-colored rooms, but what are some other concrete steps that you took to make subtle but significant changes?
Well, I started with everything. There are rooms now, where there used to be just long traverse galleries, and the kind of hierarchy of rooms influences people in a very major way to stop and look before progressing to the following room. I think it gives a kind of dignity that I think is very important. In some ways, I think that’s the biggest achievement: that you have these moments where you can pause and look out onto the landscape before moving on to the following work of art. It’s all about taking a break.
But even though this is not an encyclopedic collection — it’s a private, very subjective collection — there are so many different kinds of art that come together here. Each time I come here, I think, “Oh my god, I’ve never seen this painting before!” And the pleasure of that, of giving people the idea that they can come back again and again to discover what they haven’t seen before is very important. It’s a funny thing as an architect, what I came to realize when we did the Neue Gallery, is that the sort of self-evident, seemingly effortless being in a space is something that people take note of. And it’s not about any one gesture, it’s about a bigger attitude that defies a single style or description. It’s much more intrinsic. It’s all for people, in terms of how big it is, how it feels. I’m not interested, per se, in Feng Shui, but I do believe that grounding people and giving dignity to the visitors has to be the first order of business.
