Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The MIT Press and Grey Room, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Grey Room.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
60
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Mies's
Event
Space
DETLEF MERTINS
When theNew National Gallery (NNG) inBerlin opened on September
15, 1968, thecriticscelebrated itas amonumentalwork by one of the
greatestarchitectsof thetwentieth
century,a homecomingfor
Mies van
derRohe who had leftforChicago in 1938 and was now eighty-two
yearsold, too frailtoattendtheevent.Yet voices ofdissent rosealmost
immediately:criticspointed tofunctionalproblems indisplayingart in
the great glass hall under the levitated grid, a space thatwas
colossal
in
fornew ways to do it.And I think that Iwould not want tomiss that."'
For Mies, the task at hand in Berlin was not just to house the art of the
past, the great collection of easel paintings and figurative sculpture that
was accommodated
quite well, after all, in the permanent galleries and
sculpture garden on the lower level.2 Rather, he sought to support and
even provoke the emergence of new ways of displaying and experiencing
art, perhaps
55
re 9OOfl20. summer2005 s- 673
it.
2005 Ce Oom
rin.
and Psauet
0sTueh
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
St
>Co
61
a painting byWassily
Kandinsky
architecture,
to the floating
plane, affirming
gravityand thegroundwhile embracingtheopen plan
and spatial continuum.
Themost directevidence for
Mies's ideas aboutnewways ofexhibit
ing art at the NNG
is found in a model
a possible
62
Grey Room
20
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Mertins
Mies's
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
EventSpace
63
-~~~ __,,!
46
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
64
Grey Room 20
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
?447Jj.
*2??
9,
Mertins
IMies's
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Event Space
65
TI;
6
GryRom2
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Mertins
Friedrich.
Opposite, bottom:
New National Gallery
Exhibition Pavilion, Berlin:
a.r. penck exhibition
installation, 1988.
Photo: Reinhard Friedrich.
Below: New National Gallery
Exhibition Pavilion, Berlin:
Panamarenko exhibition
installation, 1978.
Photo: Reinhard Friedrich.
jMies's
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
EventSpace
67
Mario Merz's Drop ofWater (1987) was featured in the show Positions
in Contemporary Art (1988). The Douglas Gordon show in 1998, featur
heightenedsense of lightness,transparency,
and theatricality.
The
space
used
for performances,
68GeyRom2
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
including
the
at a time and
thus become
Mertins
Mies's
Event Space
69
Mertins
Mies's
Event Space
69
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
70
Grey Room
20
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Mertins
Opposite, top:
New National Gallery
Exhibition Pavilion, Berlin:
JennyHolzer, SMPK exhibi
tion installation, 2001.
Courtesy New National
Gallery.
Opposite, bottom:
New National Gallery
Exhibition Pavilion, Berlin:
Rem Koolhaas and OMA,
Content exhibition installa
tion, 2003. Courtesy OMA.
Below: Cedric Price,
Fun Palace forJoan
Littlewood, Stratford East,
London, Project, 1959-61.
Perspective graphite on
diazotype. Courtesy The
Museum ofModern Art,
New York.
IMies's
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Event Space
71
opens
the
72
ofmodernity
On thisstagesome performances
nityforconstructiveself-fashioning.
succeedbetterthanothers,and some failmiserablyand are seen todo so.
Themore theexhibitionspush beyond theconventionsof traditionalart
and themore theyengage thescale of thebuildingand theproblematics
ofmodernity,
themore
successful
the same as
event structure.
Mies's dark artificial
Coop Himmelb(l)au's temporary
sky isnot onlydurablebut enduring,heavy inboth the literaland figu
rativesense o1 theword,
less optimisticand light
hearted,more demanding
but also galvanizing in its
evocationof thestructure
of existence.
Grey Room 20
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Notes
textwas originally commissioned
Initiative (PEI), as
Exhibitions
by The Philadelphia
a
its
Practice:
Great
of
What
Makes
Exhibition?
part
forthcoming publication, Questions
of
PEI is a program of The Pew Charitable
Trusts and is administered
The
of
University
by
like to thank Andres Lepik for his generous
the Arts, Philadelphia.
The author would
This
interview with
formation
of the Nationalgalerie
Century Collection
1861
and became
Ludwig Mies
Blackwood
Nationalgalerie
archives.
Blackwood,
1987).
of the Neue
or sold nearly
destroyed
taken to the Soviet Union
3.Mies
The Artless
1991):
Word:
Mies
"The Preconditions
of Architectural
the Building
and
Work,"
Art
in Fritz Neumeyer,
MIT Press,
(Cambridge:
301.
4 (January/February
"Der neue Baumeister,"
1925): 3-9.
Qualit?t
van Doesburg,
trans.
"The Dwelling';
The Famous Werkbund
Exhibition,"
I. Loeb and Arthur L. Leob, On European
Charlotte
Architecture.
Complete Essays from
Het Bouwbedrijf,
1924-1931
(Basel, Berlin, Boston: Birkh?user,
1990), 164. The original
4. Hans
Richter,
5. Theo
inHet Bouwbedrijf,
vol. 4, no. 24 (November
1927): 556-559.
essay was published
6.1 am indebted to Kenneth Hayes forhis analysis of these collages and more generally
for his
artistic
7. Ludwig
Neumeyer,
Pr?s?,
Mies
1991),
to wall-sized
painting
"The Preconditions
van der Rohe
and
works
of Architectural
the Building
Art
and
immersive
Work,"
in Fritz
(Cambridge:
MIT
301.
8. Ruth Langdon
Inglis, "Architecture:
February 1966): 69-72.
Art in America
54 (January/
Mertins
I Miess
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.167 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:32:31 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Event Space
73