JASON ALREAD

THOMAS LESLIE
A Museum of Living
Iowa State University
Architecture
Continuity and Contradiction at the
Des Moines Art Center
This paper explores the design and construction of the Des Moines Art Center, revealing a set of
distinct approaches to both architectural design and the preservation and extension of existing
though not yet historic work. Three architects, Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei, and Richard Meier, designed
the center in three separate phases. Each of these projects had to take the existing fabric of land-
scape and building into account, and each adopted startlingly distinctive methods for both pre-
serving and extending the work of their predecessors. The resulting museum, seen as a place for
experiencing and making art, and as a record of architectural strategies, forms a unique opportu-
nity for investigation of and reflection upon attitudes toward renovation, preservation, extension,
and alteration of recently completed work.

Three distinct but interwoven buildings form the
Des Moines Art Center, the most important visual
arts institution in Iowa and one of the leading mid-
sized museums of the Midwest (Figure 1). The
original structure, finished in 1947, is among the
finer works of Eliel and Eero Saarinen; on its own
this low, flat-roofed building of regional limestone,
steel, and glass is one of Iowa’s most important
buildings. Twenty years later, however, the original
wing was expanded by I.M. Pei, who designed
a bold pavilion in which the siting, materials, and
composition intentionally departed from much of
the original building’s logic; yet, it is generally
acknowledged to have enriched and strengthened
the original. Less than twenty years after Pei’s
addition, Richard Meier designed a second major
new wing; this extension again offered an entirely
new set of formal, spatial, and material decisions,
but its relationship with the original has been seen
as more problematic than Pei’s. Why this might be
so, why such subjective opinions are so widely
shared, and the differences in approach of these
two invigorating departures from the rigorous logic
of Saarinen’s original design, form a provocative
pair of commentaries in how extensions to existing,
historic, even iconic, buildings can reinterpret, en-
hance, extend, and/or diminish their experience and
constructed meaning.
These built essays also touch on the inherent
risks and rewards of projects involving renovations,
alterations, and extensions to such historic build-
ings, particularly those whose legacy, at the time of
the new work, is either uncertain or at least not fully
developed. The inherent responsibilities of working
with an inarguably historic building are onerous
enough; working with a building whose historic
value is merely suggested but not yet defined by
legislation or critical acclaim has additional pitfalls.
Designers surely have some responsibility in these
cases to attempt the daunting task of seeing their
field of operations as outside the context of stylistic
or intellectual fashion and to avoid simply rejecting
the vagaries and perceived shortcomings of a pre-
vious, often parental generation. Instead, these
projects demand an almost curatorial assessment
before the work’s canonization or ultimate rejec-
tion; one runs the risk of either demolishing what
eventually may be seen as truly valuable or of
enshrining what comes to be seen as obsolete or
out of fashion.
Working with this particularly recent past
could well demand an approach that is at once
intimate and distant, one that makes a clear
statement of temporal, technical, and stylistic dis-
tinction with the original. This complex approach
simultaneously acknowledges the tenets of the
original that have either proven themselves or that
the new designer suspects (or, perhaps, deeply
hopes) will come to be seen as timeless. Such
a design method would suggest a full, curatorial
understanding that might well come with a reno-
vation of a more certainly ‘‘historic’’ structure, but
it would likewise find itself immersed in the present,
coupling such respectful analysis with a visually,
spatially, and technically clear break from the
methods and assumptions of the original. These

35 ALREAD AND LESLIE Journal of Architectural Education,

pp. 35–46 ª 2007 ACSA
 1. The gradual construction of the Des Moines Art Center, with the original, S-shaped plan of Saarinen (top), the ‘‘filling in’’ of the resulting courtyard
axis by I.M. Pei’s sculpture court (center) and the extension to the north and into the courtyard by Meier (bottom).The resulting palimpsest of spaces
and forms reveals changing attitudes toward both museum design and to existing, nearly historic works. (Diagram by the authors.)
tenets were followed, largely, by Pei and Meier
in their work at the Art Center. Their designs
provide case studies in how such a balance can be
struck—or, indeed, missed—and how the resulting
interventions can engage in a dialogue across
generations between buildings of only slightly dis-
tinct eras.
‘‘The Term Museum is Avoided’’:
The 1947 Saarinen Wing
The Des Moines Art Center was the legacy of local
banker J.D. Edmundson, who left substantial funds
for the enterprise after his death in 1946. Angered
at the city’s lack of control over polluting factories,
he specified that the museum be placed not down-
town but on any high, smoke-free ground away
from pollution. The trustees of his will selected
Greenwood Park, a hilly, wooded space two miles
west of Des Moines’ smoky downtown.1 Saarinen
was given the commission outright, though not
without controversy. Since emigrating to the United
States from Finland in the early 1920s, Saarinen
had completed a handful of important cultural and
educational institutions in the region, ranging from
the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois, to the
main buildings at Cranbrook. More daring, however,
was his unsuccessful but provocative entry for
the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art in 1939,
which attracted attention for its asymmetrical, Inter-
national Style massing and bold suggestion of
modernist forms.2 As with his 1922 Chicago Tribune
Tower entry, Saarinen achieved wider publicity for
his second place entry than the winner, John
Russell Pope, did for a far more conservative
scheme. Saarinen, then in his seventies, thus
presented a combination of clear capability with the
promise of something new.
Saarinen’s design for the Art Center lived up to
this promise; his scheme was unusual in the United
States for its quiet, unassuming presence and sim-
ple modernist lines. Pre-war museum design in the
Midwest had typically assumed the monumental
presence of neoclassicism in the first half of the
century. Neoclassical museums were built in both
Omaha and Kansas City in the 1920s, and it was
a bold choice for Des Moines to select a scheme
that replaced the intimidating presence of these
buildings with something more abstract, gentler,
and more inviting.3 Rather than crowning the mild
summit of Greenwood Park with a singular monu-
ment, Saarinen elected instead to wrap the Art
Center around the park’s contours, producing an
S-shaped building that gradually enveloped arriving
visitors on the site’s eastern side and that engaged
the end of a long, axial rose garden that ran down
the southern slope of the hill to the flood plain of
the Des Moines River.4
This informal almost casual layout echoed the
progressive nature—and perhaps the insecurities—
of Des Moines’ burgeoning cultural concerns. As
the design was publicized, much was made in the
local press of its usefulness and its lack of preten-
sion. Iowa was, at the time, hardly known as a hot-
bed of either artistic or architectural innovation,
and the trustees clearly struggled with their charge
to bring art to the provincial and rural populations
of the state. Print ad campaigns surrounding the
opening took great pains to distinguish the new
building—‘‘Here is a building to be made use of!’’
trumpeted one, paid for by the center itself, while
a local department store pointed out that the new
building was ‘‘. . . not a ’Sunday afternoon show
place,’ but an integral part of the artistic life of Des
Moines.’’5 Even the name of the building—‘‘Art
Center’’ rather than ‘‘Art Museum’’—demonstrated
an intent to strip away the intimidation inherent in
traditional museum design.6
Within this angular, meandering shape, Saari-
nen laid out the museum’s program with a deft
concern for both sequence and experience. To the
east, the education wing deployed studios and
offices around a sunken courtyard. The studios
opened up toward this court, on the north side of
the building, providing ample diffused daylight for
drawing, painting, and sculpture classes, and this
wing was given its own distinct entrance. Diago-
nally across from this, Saarinen placed the main
entrance, a soft, curving funnel of limestone that
literally offered a welcoming gesture to arriving
patrons. This entrance opened to a large, double-
height gallery, the first of three that took visitors
around a second courtyard, interspersing gallery
walls with both visual and physical access to the
rose garden that struck out across the hill’s summit.
Between the galleries and the education wing,
Saarinen located a small auditorium and the
museum’s administrative functions.
While this unpretentious, matter-of-fact lay-
out was criticized for its lack of formality (it has
always drawn pointed comparisons to an elemen-
tary school, and after its opening was even com-
pared by residents to a ‘‘penitentiary’’), it served
A Museum of Living Architecture: Continuity and 36
Contradiction at the Des Moines Art Center
2. Interior of the Saarinen lobby in 1949 with courtyard entry to
right. (Des Moines Art Center.)

the desires and needs of its clients well, offering

a welcoming presence to what, in a relatively small,
provincial Midwestern city, may well have seemed
an elitist art world.7 Saarinen proposed that the
experience of museum going could be more per-
sonal and more densely saturated in visual and
sensory qualities than the traditional, monumental
galleries offered by pre-war museums. Throughout
the Art Center’s galleries, the visitor was to come
across moments of accidental light and glimpses of
the park outside, as well as deftly handled changes
in spatial proportion that effectively adjusted the
visitor’s experience from the large volume of the
entry lobby to the more intimate galleries of the
westernmost gallery in the ‘‘tail’’ of the S-shaped
plan. Throughout, the galleries’ relation to the rose
garden provided a constant theme, as moments of
visual relief were directed to views into this space;
visitors’ eyes were drawn at irregular intervals from
the intimacy of the artwork on the gallery walls to
a suggestion of the endless, rolling Iowa landscape
outside.8
Beyond the spatial mastery of the Art Cen-
ter’s interiors, Saarinen’s attention to material and
detail here matched the best of his work else-
where. Both building and landscape were realized
with local materials used in ways that reflected
and extended the vernacular traditions of stone-
work and carpentry. The exterior was clad in
Wisconsin Lannon dolomite, part of a vein that
underlies much of northern Iowa as well, and that
has proven a useful source of stone for founda-
tions, walls, and ornament in the region ever
since.9 This stone had been used in pylons that
defined the axial direction of the nearby rose
garden, and Saarinen used it in a four-inch veneer,
backed up by standard brick, over much of the
exterior, specifying rough cuts to provide
a densely knitted texture to the center’s walls.
This contrasted with the highly finished steel and
aluminum detailing around the building’s
entrances and fenestration; a dialogue between
traditional and modern materials and methods
thus gently made the case for the building as
a hallmark for the center’s progressive educa-
tional mission. Inside, the exterior’s dull yellow
stonework was complemented by a muted palette
of plaster and blonde oak flooring, with a notable
exception in the entry gallery, where dark granite
floors and walls provided a dramatic transition
from the small scale of the exterior entry to the
somewhat grander spaces of the first display
rooms (Figure 2). Display walls were composed of
double thicknesses of plaster with a simple clad-
ding of burlap stretched to provide a diffused,
neutral background for the wide variety of art-
works intended for display.10
While the Art Center’s innovative layout and
unthreatening massing drew the most comment at
its opening, perhaps the finest, subtlest moment
of Saarinen’s design came with its crisp relation-
ship to the park’s existing rose garden (Figure 3).
Saarinen neither deferred to its presence nor did
he ignore it. The main courtyard of the center
instead engaged the garden’s axis, capturing its
directional vector and using its presence in the
landscape as a foothold in the visitor’s experience.
The courtyard itself was physically separated from
the casual paths of the garden by a low, Lannon
stone wall that drew a distinct line between old
and new while offering a prospect of the garden’s
long axis.11 Within the courtyard itself, Saarinen
placed a three-foot-deep rectangular pool, with
one corner curved to allow a generous space at the
galleries’ main access to the courtyard. This pool
became, in 1949, the setting for Carl Milles’ spe-
cially commissioned ‘‘Pegasus and Bellerophon,’’
an enigmatic composition of winged horse and
flying (or falling) figure representing, in Milles’
words, ‘‘man’s eternal journey seeking culture and
a better way of life.’’12 This focal point was
established off center in the pool, balancing the
visual weight of the gallery entrances and framing,
asymmetrically, the axis of the rose garden
beyond. Saarinen’s relation to what had gone
before was thus complex and enriching. The
invigorating dialogue between his modern forms
and the garden’s more casual layout arose not
from any attempt to copy or continue the logic
already there; rather, it proposed a gentle sepa-
ration, adopting certain elements—the location of
the axis’ centerline, for example, was borrowed for
the centerline of the courtyard—while distin-
guishing or even separating elsewhere. The bal-
ance between these connections and distinctions

37 ALREAD AND LESLIE


3. 1949 model of the Art Center showing its relationship to the
surrounding terrain, and to the existing rose garden. (Des Moines
Art Center.)
4. Stonework on the Saarinen building. View from base of education
courtyard up toward entrance. (Photography by Cameron
Campbell/Integrated Studio.)
5. The Art Center’s courtyard as originally conceived by Saarinen
and Thomas Dolliver Church included a deep reflecting pool that
related the space of the rose garden to the south with the winding
form of the new building. (Photo Courtesy Des Moines Art Center.)
was clearly thought through not only in terms of
composition but also in terms of experience: per-
spectival, spatial, and textural rather than simply
formal.
Saarinen’s building received a warm reception
from the local and international press; while some
residents remained skeptical about its modest
exterior, critics and experts were unanimous in
their praise (Figures 4 and 5). Andrew Ritchie,
director of painting and sculpture at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York, described the building
as ‘‘the finest designed small museum in the
country,’’ while Eugene Kingman, director of
Omaha’s Joslyn Museum, noted that the Art
Center was ‘‘not just a building with a picture in it,
but ’art is right around it.’’’13 The Des Moines
Register offered, perhaps, the highest praise,
noting that Saarinen and director Paul Parker were
‘‘the men of the hour,’’ and that the Art Center
had caused such a stir that ‘‘the hog market, for
the moment, is forgotten.’’14 Within six weeks,
4 I.M. Pei Wing16
3
however, Parker was gone, resigning over a con- existing landscape.’’18 The new addition would
troversy that erupted concerning the logistics of need to achieve the seemingly contradictory role of
acquisition; in reality, this dispute was only the deferring to the original building’s low entrance on
outward appearance of a long-standing argument the north while maintaining a connection to the
over whether the center should feature traditional park, and it had to accommodate tall spaces.
or ‘‘modernistic’’ art, with the trustees arguing the Eliel Saarinen had died in 1950; his son’s
former, and Parker vehemently championing the successor firm, Eero Saarinen and Associates, was
latter.15 approached to design the new addition in 1966.
5
‘‘A Sculpture in Itself’’: The 1968
As part of the center’s opening, Saarinen reflected
on the philosophy behind the new building, noting
presciently that ‘‘Buildings are nothing, studios are
nothing, unless you use them to full advantage.’’17
Des Moines did in fact take full advantage of the
new building, with studio classes filling rapidly and
the first year of exhibits drawing thousands of
viewers from around the state. Very shortly, Saari-
nen’s intimate galleries and auditorium were clearly
inadequate to the needs of the center, whose own
role in the midst of a rapidly growing city was
expanding annually.
In the 1960s, the Art Center trustees deter-
mined that an addition was needed to respond to
the center’s growing collection and to the larger
scale of contemporary works, particularly sculpture.
This would require larger volumes of space than
much of the original museum galleries, but the
trustees intended to respect the initial goal put
forward to Saarinen that ‘‘the building should be
low so as to hug the ground and become part of the
A Museum of Living Architecture: Continuity and 38
Contradiction at the Des Moines Art Center
The firm declined the project because it was too
small, and subsequently I.M. Pei was asked to
consider the commission.19 Pei was an unusual
choice for a museum; educated at Harvard and MIT,
his professional experience to that point consisted
primarily of large commercial and residential
developments that reflected his apprenticeship
under developer William Zeckendorf. But these
projects had won notice for their combination of
pragmatic and often quite economical construction
and their powerful massing; both were a result of
Pei’s mastery of concrete. Pei also represented
a second generation of modernism, one that would
expand its vocabulary to include a more technically
inclined palette and that took an increasing interest
in relating the abstract aesthetics of an earlier
generation with a nod toward the monumentality of
earlier eras. As with Saarinen, the center’s choice of
Pei thus reflected his diligence and reliability and
his growing reputation as an innovator; Art Center
Trustee David Kruidenier remarked after a prelimi-
nary visit to Pei’s office that ‘‘. . . he took out
a piece of tracing paper on the spot, and in ten or
fifteen minutes had sketched a plan and elevation
so close to the final product that the sheer act of
creativity left me breathless.’’20 Pei’s suggestion
was to take the south-facing courtyard that Saar-
inen had formed and to fill it in with the 18,000
square foot sculpture gallery. This approach used
the southern slope of the site to keep the building
low against the Saarinen wing and courtyard, while
stepping down to create tall spaces required for the
artwork. The sculpture gallery thus took the sec-
tional shape of a sideways ‘‘L’’ with floor space split
between the top of the new auditorium, where the
gallery faced onto the courtyard, and a level at the
floor of the auditorium, that opened to the land-
scape. Two staircases defined axial relationships
across the space. One ran across the old rose gar-
den axis, alongside the wall of the auditorium, while
the other bridged the gallery below, paralleling the
axis and dropping down to the lower level by means
of a travertine spiral staircase.21 Additionally, the
39 ALREAD AND LESLIE
scheme made a loop that allowed visitors to circu-
late around the series of galleries rather than
retrace their steps.22 The form of the building was
intended to allow large naturally illuminated areas
to house sculpture with maximum flexibility of
placement and circulation. The program of the
addition affected the functions of the original
Saarinen building very little, with only a relocation
of the auditorium and some administrative spaces
modifying the existing arrangement.
The placement of the new building, commonly
referred to as the ‘‘sculpture court’’ (a term refer-
ring to the intention of the building to be perceived
as an extension of the original open courtyard), cut
off the direct axial connection that Saarinen had
developed between the courtyard and Greenwood
Park. Saarinen’s original layout connected to a pair
of pathways that ran southward into the rose gar-
den, and the central reflecting pool ‘‘provided the
visitor with a diverting moment of visual relaxation
as it surveys the pathway to the south.’’23 These
gardens have a series of Lannon stone pylons that
flank the pathways and served as a material pre-
cedent for the stone used in the Saarinen building.
While Pei’s addition deferred to the existing
museum entrance and maintained a low overall
profile, invisible from the main street, it effectively
cut off the relationship between the courtyard and
the garden (Figure 6). Pei appears to have
responded to this split by tracing the existing gar-
den pathways through his addition. The north face
of the Pei wing sits precisely at the edge of the
existing reflecting pond with large glass expanses
that allow visitors in the courtyard visual access
through the building to the south (Figure 7). He
modified the shape of the pond only slightly to
project his building into the edge, creating a blur-
ring of where the building and water begin and end.
The original garden pathways are maintained and
end in doorways that allow access directly from the
addition to the park. The large volumes of the Pei
building, while carving impressive space beneath, 6. Construction of the sculpture court in 1968 (Des Moines Art
allow the ground plane from the courtyard to flow Center.)

7. The sculpture court wing by I.M. Pei in 2007 from the courtyard.
Pei’s design transformed the reflecting pool, making it shallower, and
emphasized the axis to the old rose garden through transparency and
the careful alignment of its concrete walls. (Photo by the authors.)
through the building and down to the park beyond,
while large areas of glass on both the south and
north provide axial views between the interior and
exterior spaces. While the museum has been criti-
cized for the enclosure as a privatization of what
was once an open public court, the decisions made
by Pei seem to have produced the best outcome
from the many conflicting desires for the project.
Overall the addition can be seen as an extension of
the existing courtyard into the building, with the
addition of two more interior courts, and an axial
connection of the garden pathways through the
project and into the park.
The planning of the sculpture court thus
advances a rhetoric of complicity and contradiction
with the old linear axis of the landscape, empha-
sizing but also crossing the direction of the rose
garden. Pei followed this idea through the build-
ing’s massing. Constructed of dense reinforced
concrete, the sculpture court used fin walls and
deep, often angled light shelves to again emphasize
and cut across the linear axis. Solid walls were
arranged parallel to the axis, constantly directing
views and movement toward either the courtyard or
the garden, while the two end walls of the court
formed complex compositions of horizontal and
vertical concrete fins with vast areas of simple plate
glass.24 This draws views out into the two exterior
spaces, allowing the court to physically and expe-
rientially occupy the marginal space between the
two. Despite the heavy concrete surrounds, the
sculpture court is filled with diffused daylight, in part
from the large-end windows, but also from a large,
butterfly-shaped vault in the roof (Figure 8).
Pei substantially revamped the courtyard itself
as well, altering its shape to a pure rectangle by
removing the curved corner at the gallery entrance,
reducing the pool’s depth to a manageable six
inches, and moving Pegasus and Bellerophon
diagonally across the pool. The paving pattern for
the pool’s base was also changed to focus on this
sculpture’s new location.25 In doing so, Pei brought
the southern edge of the pool directly to the
exterior line of the sculpture court’s north facade,
implying continuity between court and courtyard.
This careful edge treatment was matched on the
south side, where the sculpting of the landscape 8. Interior of the sculpture court, showing the butterfly-shaped
around the facade offered a similar sense of con- roof. (Photography by Cameron Campbell/Integrated Studio.)
tinuation between inside and out. That the lime-
stone pillars of the rose garden are just visible
through the court’s glass windows is surely no the aggregate to match the color and texture of the
accident; in locating the new wing where he did, original structure. This approach is remarkably
and in deploying the structure and material of the effective, and the vertical striations of the bush-
court carefully, Pei was able to use the building to hammered finish accentuate the more vertical focus
literally inhabit the garden’s axis. of the addition compared to the horizontal, ram-
During the 50th anniversary celebration of the bling arrangement of the Saarinen building. When
Des Moines Art Center’s collection of buildings in faced with the task of actually touching the original
1998, I.M. Pei visited for a lecture and was asked stone walls with the concrete, the junctures were
to comment on his approach to the project. While not articulated, but rather directly, crisply cut into
the massing and placement of the addition were one another. Even the architectural drawings show
certainly critical decisions, he started by speaking only a simple juncture with no special connection
about the selection of the primary building material detail noted. The effect appears as a natural flow
and noting that the Saarinen building was con- between the two structures.
structed of limestone but that buildings could no The use of concrete gives the feel of being
longer be built in this labor-intensive, hand-crafted carved from solid form rather than constructed
manner.26 Pei thus decided to use the same Wis- from smaller parts. The most dramatic space is the
consin limestone as aggregate for a concrete build- upper gallery where a large concrete butterfly roof
ing, using a bush-hammered finish that exposed floats over the visitor, accentuating the mass of the
A Museum of Living Architecture: Continuity and 40
Contradiction at the Des Moines Art Center
concrete suspended by a single large beam. This
roof allows light in from the sides creating a play
between the solidity of the form and the varying
qualities of daylight on the interior surfaces. While
the Saarinen building and the Pei addition are each
exemplary products of their time, the contrasts
between them work together to form a clear, whole
composition that improves rather than compro-
mises the best qualities of the other. It is also
notable that the large glass windows of the sculp-
ture court frame and emphasize views of both the
landscape and the Saarinen building. Whether
conscious or not, movement through the sculpture
court constantly presents viewers with precisely
delineated images of planting to the south, and
of dolomite walls to the north and east, in each
case framed by a consistent color and texture of
concrete.
The sculpture court opened in October 1968,
drawing almost 3,500 patrons to its premiere.
Despite the radical differences between new and
old, reviews were unanimously positive, and nearly
all remarked on the fact that the new building
seemed to enhance both the art within, and the
existing building beyond. ‘‘It is a concept which
sees architecture as sculpture,’’ noted regional
critic Emily Genauer on the court’s interior.
‘‘Sunlight and shadow fall in pools and shadows
that dramatize works without overpowering them,
almost as if Pei had not only shaped the archi-
tecture but stage-lighted its contents so they are
‘performers’ in a brilliantly unified theatrical
production. . .’’27
Pei’s building seemed to complete the Saari-
nen design, finishing a project that, two years prior,
no one had viewed as unfinished. It did this in a way
that was both assertive and gentle, willing to take
bold action and, when necessary, to offer a more
reticent massing and palette. Perhaps most tell-
ingly, one local paper noted similarities between the
emphasis on spaces within the sculpture court and
one of Pei’s rare written forays into explaining his
conception of architecture:
41 ALREAD AND LESLIE
One gets a suggestion of Pei’s special concepts
in a short piece he wrote several years ago on
the urban uses of space. . . The ancient
philosopher Lao-tse once remarked that the
essence of a vessel is its emptiness. A city, in
a sense, is a vessel too—a container for people
and for life. A city’s essence, like a vessel’s, also
lies in its voids, its public spaces.
. . .by extension, the new Art Center addition
is not merely a series of walls, but a sequence
of spaces enclosed and defined by those
walls. A sequence of beautiful spaces.28
Pei’s willingness to see his wing as such
a vessel, not merely for space and sculpture, but for
sensory experience, led to a remarkable structure
that was able to both emphasize and transcend the
existing fabric of space and material. The voids of
its end walls have the effect of pulling the void of
its central space into both courtyard and landscape,
making the building a connector of space when
viewed from the ends, even as it asserts its massive
formal qualities from the sides.
‘‘Extraordinary and Conspicuous’’:
The 1984 Meier Wing29
Just as Pei was given a site with a structure barely
twenty years old to relate and refer to, Richard
Meier was given the commission to add more gal-
lery space, a café, and logistical areas to the Art
Center in 1984—a mere seventeen years following
the addition of the sculpture court. While Pei had
been given a strict program—space for sculpture
alone—Meier’s charge involved new areas for two-
and three-dimensional work, in particular for space
that would give contemporary art a place of its own.
Once the Pei building was complete, the center was
able to remove its original, undersized auditorium,
providing new gallery space designed by Des
Moines Architect Charles Herbert for traditional
paintings, but this left only the two gallery wings of
the Saarinen building for post–World War I work.30
Meier had just completed the High Museum in
Atlanta, to good reviews, and was thus a logical
choice for the Art Center. While reflecting a balance
of competence and daring, just as Saarinen and Pei
had represented safe but progressive choices in
years past, the selection of Meier also demon-
strated the center’s awareness of architectural de-
bates and trends of the day. While his influences—
Le Corbusier and Breuer, notably—were resolutely
first- and second-generation modernists, Meier’s
syntheses of their principles occurred within the
context of a new interest in architecture as a
language. Meier was typically seen as an arriere-
garde figure in the postmodern debates of the day,
but his work adopted wholesale principles of
representation, composition, and privileging of
the graphic that marked the work of other
postmodernists—albeit with a nominally abstract
appearance.
Meier took the program as given to him and
noted that its scale had the potential to over-
whelm the delicate balance achieved by the two
earlier architects. He proposed a fragmentary
approach, splitting the addition into three sepa-
rate pavilions that would attach to the existing
complex in key areas, adding ‘‘binding threads’’ to
the center while breaking down the bulk of the
new program into volumes more compatible with
the existing buildings’ scale.31 While this strategy
suggested a deferential approach, Meier’s initial
statement also focused heavily on visual and
formal strategies at the expense of the experien-
tial. He noted, ‘‘The problem was to design an
addition that would respect the older building’s
horizontality.’’32
Faced with the two buildings that, together,
produced an unintended whole, Meier could
apparently find no solution as brilliantly obvious as
Pei’s. The Pei wing closed the loop conveniently
implied but not conceived by Saarinen, and the
1984 addition perhaps inevitably faced a more
difficult task of integration. Meier could have
followed Pei’s lead and ‘‘completed’’ the leg left
open by the east, education wing, but this was
problematic for several reasons: there was no clear
circulatory loop in the education wing; this location
would have disrupted the center’s parking; and
perhaps most importantly, this location would have
obscured the original entrance.
Instead, Meier proposed locating the addition
on a site rejected by the center and Pei twenty years
earlier—to the north of the center, on the broad
‘‘front lawn’’ facing Grand Avenue. The bulk of the
new addition would thus present a new front to
passing traffic, while additional galleries, handling
facilities, and a café would occupy two satellite
pavilions that would flank the final, smaller gallery
of the Saarinen wing (Figure 9). New galleries and
service areas would be located toward the parking
and loading area to the west, while the café would
be placed within the courtyard, adding Meier’s
architectural statement to the dialogue initiated by
Pei’s addition.33
The largest of these three volumes was
designed for the Museum’s twentieth-century col-
lection and for traveling exhibits. It borrowed Pei’s
use of glass walkways to connect to the northwest
corner of the Saarinen gallery complex, and was
precisely set apart from the existing building,
borrowing the line of the extended museum shop
for its datum, and then manifesting itself as a series
of interlocking volumes and forms that together
added up to an alternating sequence of rectilinear
and curvilinear display areas that revolve around
a central atrium with a curved wall. Meier described
this wing in clinical terms:
The plan is an eroded nine-square grid, with the
central square pushed up to provide a four-
column central atrium, lit by clerestory windows
and perimeter skylights. This central volume is
sheathed in granite and roofed by a flattened
pyramid that acts as a foil to the butterfly-
section roof of the Pei addition. The north-
south section through the whole complex
9. The Richard Meier-designed 1984 addition. (Photography by
Cameron Campbell/Integrated Studio.)
reveals the new building’s relation to the Pei
addition: together the two bracket the Saarinen
building, which becomes a centerpiece made all
the more important by the strong volumetric
and stylistic contrasts.34
Of the two smaller pavilions, the café was
clearly the most important architecturally, as it
engaged the calm of the courtyard directly,
intruding through the crook of the Saarinen wing to
face the very different tectonic and experiential
offerings of the Saarinen and Pei wings. Again,
Meier described the importance of this pavilion in
formal, rather than experiential, terms:
The east-west entry axis of the existing museum
is reinforced architecturally by the new courtyard
pavilion, which also acts as a pivot point for
the intersecting north-south axis. This pavilion,
which contains the restaurant/meeting room and
opens to the courtyard during the warm months,
activates this previously little-used outdoor
space. The courtyard becomes, in effect, a stage
for the juxtaposition of the three different phases
and manners of architecture represented in the
building.35
This gesture was at once bold, self-conscious,
and risky. Meier aligned the courtyard entry to the
café directly across from the entry lobby’s court-
yard door; he emphasized it with a metal archway
that relates to and contrasts with the ornament
around the Saarinen door. Likewise, while the
modularity of the café is clearly called out to
mathematically relate to the paving of the court-
yard, and thus to the formal proportions and
rhythms of the two earlier wings, Meier con-
sciously selected a curvilinear form for the café’s
main volume, contrasting formally with everything
around it (except, possibly, the curved funnel of
the main entrance on the other side of the center).
The vagaries of this form, however, go further
than a mere contrast in shape. Because of its
location—apparently selected by Meier to create
a ‘‘stage for . . . juxtaposition,’’ the café required
the prismatic shape of the reflecting pool to be
altered, with two stepped corners to permit pas-
sage around Meier’s new volume. Whether this
‘‘activation’’ of the space was ever necessary—
‘‘little used’’ might well be merely a pejorative
term for ‘‘meditative’’—there can be little doubt
that the creation of such an architectonic ‘‘stage’’
was purely an invention of Meier’s. Rather than
the imagined dialogue, the effect is more that of
a somewhat brash would-be suitor interrupting
a delicate, tentative conversation between a wary
new couple (Figure 10).
The Meier wing also broke sharply with Pei’s
notion that color, texture, spatial proportions, and
perspectival views of the original through the fabric
of the addition could make meaningful links
between new and existing structures. Meier chose,
instead, to present visitors with a radically different
palette of materials inside the new galleries—white
plaster and metal with light wood floors. Likewise,
rather than the shaded, diffused light that infil-
trated both earlier wings, the atrium in the Meier
wing was topped by a south-facing glass skylight,
which filled this space and those surrounding it with
brilliant, direct sunlight. Meier chose to relate to the
A Museum of Living Architecture: Continuity and 42
Contradiction at the Des Moines Art Center
existing wings through formal means, borrowing
rooflines, wall edges, and volumetric (as opposed
to spatial or constructional) proportions from his
predecessors.36
Perhaps most apparent was Meier’s use of
gridded elevations, a trademark, which here were
called out as the primary means of providing cues
that would relate the new wing with the old.
Describing these, Meier was quicker to relate the
materials and measures used to his own work,
rather than to the precedents of the two earlier
buildings, explaining in detail the metrical grid of
metal panels and granite. This latter material was,
Meier noted, a new element in his famously
restrained palette; it had been used sparingly, for
instance, as a ‘‘plinth’’ for the High Museum in
Atlanta.37 Interestingly, in some versions of this
statement, the term plinth is clarified by a footnote
reading: ‘‘a plinth is the base of a column or a base
on which a statue is set.’’ This could well describe
the base of the gallery wing in Meier’s addition,
which sets a flat datum across an otherwise rolling
site, from which the formal exercises of the gallery
wing can be read. Such a constructed element to
relate building to site was clearly distinct from both 10. Meier’s axonometric rendering of his addition symptomatically reduced the textural and material interplay of the earlier wings to simple
representation. (Des Moines Art Center.)
Saarinen and Pei, who both saw the sculpting of the
site itself as a key ingredient in the experience of
their buildings. that he intended this work to be seen was not only Conclusions
Similarly, curved forms borrowed from Meier’s the Art Center as it existed but also his own work. Time has been kinder to the reception given Pei’s
own repertoire were given both self-referential Second, it is clear that the forms and materials sug- addition than to that of Meier’s.
and (somewhat less enthusiastic) contextual gested by Meier were quite literally portable; lime-
justifications: stone, for example, remains readily available [T]he public did not easily accept Meier’s
throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa; yet, addition when it was completed. Its pristine
The curved forms throughout the scheme, granite was selected for its ‘‘contrasting’’ color. sculptural geometry appeared to dominate the
which echo each other in plan and section, are Again, Meier’s claims of a ‘‘dialogue’’ bear little quiet landscape, and its stark white porcelain
clad in porcelain-enameled steel, thin and scrutiny; such a portable palette of materials and panels contrasted with the earlier designs that
reflective walls that contrast with the solidity of forms suggests that the rooted, place-specific seemed to blend with the site. The building was
granite. They serve to give the additions an natures of both the Saarinen and Pei wings were compared to a saltshaker and a urinal, and the
animation that counterpoints the linear sobriety simply ignored—productively, perhaps, in Meier’s design considered disrespectful and pretentious.
of the Saarinen galleries.38 view, but nevertheless his written statement suggests This criticism has softened over time. . ..39
something more of an architectural monologue car-
Meier’s statement is puzzling for two primary ried out in proximity to an impassioned tectonic and Moreover, as the discipline has gradually moved
reasons. First, it is apparent that the context against spatial conversation between the two earlier wings. away from celebrating the stark representational

43 ALREAD AND LESLIE


11. The Art Center’s courtyard remains an architectural and cultural
moment of powerful resonance in Iowa. Here, the Meier café forms
a backdrop for two works of art separated by fifty years—Carl
Milles’ Pegasus and Bellerophon and Iowa Artist and Architect Pete
Goche’s Drift. (Pete Goche, American born. Installation/
performance. Wax tablets and cotton wick. Photography by
Cameron Campbell/Integrated Studio.)
qualities shown in Meier’s work toward standards
that give equal weight to tectonic, material, and
environmental qualities, the later addition has
seen its status in Iowa and in the profession
shrink.40 All three buildings are decidedly of their
eras—and certainly the Meier building could see
resurgence in its status as both icon and spatial
container—but the values implicit in the two earlier
structures resonate in tactile, experiential ways
to which the latter addition simply never aimed
(Figure 11).
This, we believe, offers important suggestions
for how buildings can speak to one another across
eras since all three structures (Saarinen’s, recall,
altered the existing landscape rather dramatically)
did varying degrees of violence and justice to their
forebears. The Pei addition performed what in less
thoughtful hands might well have been an
unbearable surgery to the subtle relationship
between built and landscaped environments initi-
ated by Saarinen. However, this addition’s sensi-
tivity toward the possibilities engendered by the
courtyard and landscape axis presented to it had
the uncanny effect of transforming the original into
a hybrid now regarded as, itself, iconic. Even
though the resulting courtyard was utterly, dra-
matically altered, the resulting space offered
equally valid, rich opportunities to engage art, land,
and building. Likewise, the Pei building’s attention
to texture and color offers the eye a direct pair of
connections to the warm, knitted character of
Saarinen’s dolomite walls. Finally, Pei’s fundamen-
tal choices of perspectival opportunities and their
basis on the site’s landscape axis and the existing
building’s forms and surfaces demonstrated
a unique understanding of architecture as a frame
for sensory experience; the sculpture court houses
objects within, but it also functions as a kind of
camera to vistas and compositions without, high-
lighting the layering of new and old within the
visual and kinesthetic senses.
This is not—necessarily—to say that Meier, by
choosing a different tack, failed. The aloofness of
his addition, its self-referentiality and its hermetic
spaces, also comment on the older building through
which it burrows and to which it attaches. It is quite
clear that Meier’s vertical atrium has a direct and
contrasting relationship with the broader, horizon-
tal spaces of both previous buildings, for example,
and this is also clearly exhibited in the external
composition of the main pavilion. Yet, it is very
difficult to traverse the loop of the Art Center’s
galleries and not draw comparisons between the
intensity of character in the two earlier buildings
and the relative poverty of experience in the newer.
Part of this lies in the physical nature of the
three—where the stone and concrete of the first
two pavilions have robustly shrugged off repeated
Iowa winters, the porcelain steel skin of the Meier
wing has suffered leaks, misalignments, and cor-
rosion that inevitably contrast with its rhetoric of
abstract perfectionism. But part of this, too, lies in
the conception of the addition as a whole. The rich,
saturated experiences of both Saarinen’s and Pei’s
wings stem from their designers’ careful consider-
ation of spaces from within; that is, there is a con-
cern for the buildings as experienced and as lived in
that is evident, for example, from Saarinen’s
attention to tactility or from Pei’s enveloping sense
of space. Meier’s wing was clearly considered from
without, as his chosen method of presentation—
axonometric drawings—makes apparent. While his
drawings suggest a rich interplay between old and
new, they do not take into account either the per-
spectival effects of parallax, which makes it difficult
to perceive the subtle relations between datum
lines, offset surfaces, and aligning planes, or the
sensory effects of color, texture, and material. All
planes in Meier’s drawings are unrendered, denying
the obvious fact that the machined texture of
a porcelain steel plate offers a visual and tactile
experience that is distinct from that of a rough-
hewn dolomite wall. Thus, while the geometric
exercises in parapet alignment and cornice height
coordination that Meier sought to base his rela-
tionship to the existing buildings on may well have
been convincing in conception and presentation,
we are left with the odd sense of the addition as
interloper. Where one addition to Saarinen’s mas-
terful composition has intensified and transformed
its predecessor, another has perhaps shown both
too much and too little restraint, declining the
opportunity to wrestle or argue with its site, but
also declining to participate in any new sense of
continuity.
The three wings of the Des Moines Art Center
neatly track attitudes toward museum design and
the status of recently built works through the latter
half of the twentieth century. Changing require-
ments and perceptions of the art museum as a cul-
tural institution are reflected by the three wings’
A Museum of Living Architecture: Continuity and 44
Contradiction at the Des Moines Art Center
varying emphases on proportion (horizontal and
thus welcoming in the Saarinen wing, more monu-
mental and more sculptural in the Pei and Meier
wings) and by their programs and arrangements.
The majority of the space in the original wing was
dedicated to education; in the Pei addition there is
a greater emphasis on the social potential of a larger
auditorium, an open display area, and a newly
defined outdoor court. Similarly, Meier’s placement
of a café in the center’s courtyard, and the inten-
tionality of its inclusion in the Meier style, suggests
more commercial intentions that would come to
dominate museum projects of the 1980s and 1990s.
While these essays in museum design are revealing,
each wing also suggests attitudes toward the recent
past that are also compelling. Saarinen’s subtle
capture of the rose garden, his rambling, landscape-
inflected massing, and his willing adoption of this
garden’s limestone as a signature material parallel
themes of deference to both landscape and tradi-
tional building craft that were also reflected in con-
temporary work by Richard Neutra and Marcel
Breuer, for example. Pei’s addition suggested a bal-
ance of monumentality and independence from
precedent with a concern for a holistic, experiential
dialogue with its predecessors; in this it matched the
combination of formal expression with historicist or
contextual references of such Brutalist works as Paul
Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building at Yale
(1963), or Kallman, McKinnell, and Knowles’ 1961
Boston City Hall. Indeed, Pei’s wing might well have
been the most successful statement of Brutalism’s
potential as a transformative contextual strategy.
Finally, Meier’s design clearly represents the
emphasis placed on purely formal or visual links to
precedents that was common in the 1980s.
In each case, the center’s additions found
themselves needing to establish a working rela-
tionship with structures of a previous, parental
generation and adopted strategies that proclaimed
independence from—and deference to—various
elements or precepts of the earlier works. That the
prior structures had in neither case yet acquired the
45 ALREAD AND LESLIE
iconic status of a genuine ‘‘historic’’ structure
complicated matters considerably, and one can see
in the efforts to both relate and distance new work
from that of the recent past an almost oedipal
struggle to define oneself apart from and in relation
to one’s predecessors. There is in Pei and Meier’s
buildings a sense of posturing, of setting oneself
apart from prior work, but there are also links to
Saarinen and to the original park’s landscape
(subtle in both cases, perhaps more successful in
Pei’s structure) that reveal how inextricably bound
our work is to that of our immediate predecessors,
and how productively complex and meaningful
those bindings, frankly acknowledged and
explored, can be.
Coda
In 2002, Artist Andy Goldsworthy was invited to
create a permanent installation on the grounds of
the Art Center. In keeping with his global project to
build rock cairns at significant geographical points
across North America, Goldsworthy proposed and
constructed three monumental prisms and one
ovoid of dolomite in the wooded area just south of
the Education Wing of the original center. Gold-
sworthy described the genesis of the project as the
starting point to a long series of works that
explored architectural constructions: ‘‘There are
many starting places for a sculpture. When I came
here and saw the Saarinen building, I realized there
was a very evenly laid limestone in the vicinity.’’41
The stonework in each of the cairns is laid precisely,
but without mortar; over time Goldsworthy envi-
sions them slowly decaying. As a result, the tactility
of the stonework surpasses even that of the original
center building; visitors are wordlessly invited to
touch the stones and even to climb into the egg-
shaped voids contained within them. This rich
sensory and physical experience is matched, how-
ever, by an invisible geometrical alignment; the
cairns face three compass points, and their posi-
tions, which impinge just slightly onto the rose
garden’s axis, are precisely determined by the
location and orientation of the old auditorium
corridor connecting the galleries with the education
wing in the Saarinen building. Nowhere in Gold-
sworthy’s famously elliptical writings is there any
indication that this was intended as a commentary
on the relative merits of immersive, constructive
technique versus abstract geometrical relations in
architecture, but this reading of the cairns may bear
some attention given the dialogues and mono-
logues surrounding them.
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to Laura Burkhalter of the
Des Moines Art Center for her assistance and
guidance during our research.
Notes
1. Richard Davis, ‘‘An Art Center Readily Comes to Des Moines,’’ The Des
Moines Register, June 3, 1948, n.p.
2. Franz Schulze, ‘‘Architectural Trinity in Des Moines,’’ in Terry Ann R.
Neff, ed., An Uncommon Vision: The Des Moines Art Center (New York:
Hudson Hills Press, 1998), pp. 12–13.
3. ‘‘. . . as far back as the 1940s, the Trustees of the Des Moines Art
Center became early pioneers in fostering . . . matchmaking [of vanguard
architects to provincial museum projects]. Its selection of the Finnish-
American Eliel Saarinen to design a museum in a relatively small
Midwestern city was a radical departure from the norm. The stylistic norm
for art museums at that time was the ‘First National Bank Style’ with its
solid, stolid neo-Classical facxade of pediment, post, and lintel.’’ James T.
Demetrion, Director, Des Moines Art Center. ‘‘Des Moines Art Center,’’
Iowa Architect, March–April, 1984, 16.
4. ‘‘The original 1948 Saarinen design is an elegant and restrained
building of 47,000 square feet distributed in four wings. Three galleries
form a U-shape around a reflecting pool. The fourth and largest wing
extends eastward from the entrance gallery and houses facilities for art
classes. The building’s configuration sprawls gently over the sloping ter-
rain with a considerable footprint, but its setback from Grand Avenue
enhances the site’s serenity.’’ Mark E. Blunck, ‘‘Des Moines Art Center:
An Experiment in Contextual Evolution,’’ Inland Architect, May/June,
1989, 70.
5. ‘‘Accent will be on Activity at the New Des Moines Art Center, Opening
Soon!’’ Print ad, The Des Moines Register, June 1, 1948, and Print Ad, Des
Moines Register, May 30, 1948, n.p.
6. ‘‘. . . the word museum is avoided . . .’’ ‘‘Art Center,’’ Architectural
Forum, July 1949, 66–69.
7. ‘‘. . . Saarinen’s design was linear in nature and his building . . . angles
across the northwestern perimeter of Greenwood Park, hugging the
ground all the way. Its unpretentious main entrance ‘resembled that of an
elementary school, not a real museum’ as one of the above-mentioned
luminaries . . . referred to it condescendingly during his interview for the
commission to the present project . . . Saarinen’s modest entrance was
his effective way of mitigating the forbidding, threatening character
which many museum buildings have. Instead, the deep overhang above
the doorway and the curved sides which splay outward beckon the
visitor to come inside.’’ James T. Demetrion, 16. Also see ‘‘Art Center,’’
ibid.
8. This relaxed, comfortable atmosphere was captured rather well by
Architectural Forum, which noted that: ‘‘. . .this change in attitude is even
more evident in the design of the building, which strives for simplicity in
background for displays and pleasantness in environment. It is a newly
emphasized axiom that people will not like art if their feet hurt, or if they
are made to feel like schoolchildren on a tour. If there is some place to
sit, their feet may feel better, even if they don’t sit down. If there are
pleasant vistas to enjoy, they may well approach the objects displayed
in the Center with greater friendliness.’’ ‘‘Art Center,’’ ibid.
9. Richard Davis, ‘‘An Art Center Readily Comes to Des Moines,’’ The Des
Moines Register, June 3, 1948, n.p.
10. ‘‘Art Center to Open Here in Mid-Week,’’ The Des Moines Sunday
Register, May 30, 1948, 1.
11. These connective elements were designed by San Francisco Land-
scape Architect Thomas Dolliver Church. No particular mention is made of
Church in a recent publication on the Des Moines Art Center, or in
information shared by the institution about the design. However, in
researching the drawings for the building there is a landscape layout from
Church’s office matching much of the existing development in the Art
Center’s files. Church was a transitional figure in landscape architecture
whose interest in pairing classical and modern sensibilities fit well with
Saarinen’s aesthetic. Other Midwestern work by Church included land-
scape designs for Eero Saarinen’s GM Technical Research Center and the
Mayo Clinic, though his work was largely centered around the Bay Area,
where he practiced until his death in 1978.
12. ‘‘Art Center to Open Here in Mid-Week,’’ ibid.
13. ‘‘Praises Design at Art Center.’’ Undated, unsourced clipping.
Scrapbook in box marked ‘‘1940–1950,’’ Archives of the Des Moines Art
Center, Des Moines, Iowa, and ‘‘Art Center Realization of Donor’s Hopes,’’
Des Moines Register, June 7, 1948.
14. Richard Davis, ibid.
15. ‘‘Parker Quits, Reveals Rift in Art Center,’’ The Des Moines Register,
August 14, 1948. Parker’s replacement, Richard Howard, survived largely
by walking a fine line between the two poles, pursuing parallel tracks by
acquiring works that were both comfortable and challenging.
16. Mrs. Grant Crenshaw, Des Moines resident, at the opening of the
sculpture court. Quoted in Stephen Seplow, ‘‘A Record Crowd Flocks to
Enlarged Art Center,’’ Des Moines Register, October 7, 1968.
17. Pamphlet, ‘‘Des Moines Art Center.’’ In box marked ‘‘1969–1974.’’
Archives of the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa.
18. Franz Schulze, 13.
19. James T. Demetrion, 16.
20. Franz Schulze, 24. This comment comes from a conversation between
Schulze and Kruidenier in 1996.
21. ‘‘The Visual Arts,’’ Des Moines Sunday Register, March 26, 1967, 2-L.
22. Mark E. Blunck, 70.
23. Franz Schulze, 14.
24. From the rose garden, the south facade of the sculpture court is
alleged to spell ‘‘PEI,’’ lending credence to the notion that the architect
had, in this case, been asked to provide a ‘‘signature’’ building.
25. Gene Raffensperger, ‘‘The Art Center: Beauty and Cultural Strength,’’
The Des Moines Sunday Register, October 6, 1968, 4–8.
26. ‘‘Saarinen Versus Saarinen,’’ panel presentation, ‘‘Architectural Trin-
ity: 50 Years of the Des Moines Art Center,’’ I.M. Pei, Franz Schulze,
Edmund N. Bacon, and Peter Papademetriou, Sheslow Auditorium, Drake
University, Des Moines, Iowa, October 17, 1998.
27. Emily Genauer, ‘‘Two Dazzling Showcases for Art in Iowa,’’ The Des
Moines Sunday Register, June 15, 1969, 3:4.
28. ‘‘Just Call him I. M,’’ Des Moines Register, October 1, 1968, 2.
29. Mark E. Blunck, 71.
30. ‘‘Art Gifts Enrich the Collection,’’ Des Moines Tribune, October 3,
1968, n.p.
31. ‘‘The program called for permanent exhibition spaces as well as
temporary ones to house large traveling exhibitions, additional service
spaces including a maintenance room and loading dock facilities to pro-
vide a direct relationship to new and existing art storage areas, and a new
public restaurant that could also function as a meeting room. An analysis
of the site and program suggested dividing the new addition into separate
volumes that would allow for expansion in required areas, rather than
introducing a third large building mass. On this premise, three new
additions were located with respect to the existing operations; the inter-
face between the new and old designed to allow efficient functional
coordination. Enclosed connections to the additions reinforce the existing
axes in the Saarinen plan, and become the binding threads of the museum
complex. This organization also enabled some hundred-year old trees on
the north part of the site to be preserved.’’ Richard Meier, ibid.
32. Richard Meier, ‘‘Architect’s Statement,’’ reprinted in A1U 61.
September, 1985, 61.
33. ‘‘Instead of locating the entire addition in one place, Meier’s
design calls for three structures: a one-story dining facility in the
northwest part of the Maytag Reflecting Pool and Courtyard; a two-story
section to the west housing a gallery of African art above and
maintenance shop areas below; and, balancing Pei’s addition to the south,
a three-story section to the north for changing exhibition galleries,
permanent collection galleries, storage facilities and an outdoor terrace.
Also included in the project is the renovation and/or relocation of the
library, museum shop, some classrooms, administrative offices and the
Main and West Galleries.’’ James T. Demetrion, 20.
34. Richard Meier, ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. ‘‘Meier’s task was incomparably more difficult than was Saarinen’s
(starting from scratch is always easier than adding on) or Pei’s (Saarinen
had left a gap between two sections of his building which Pei had simply
filled). Rather than ‘blending in’ coloristically to the existing struc-
ture—the architect’s white panels are virtually his trademark—Meier’s
relationship to the building will be manifested in a more subtle way, since
it will involve less obvious elements such as proportions and roof lines.’’
James T. Demetrion, 20.
37. Richard Meier, ibid.
38. Richard Meier, ibid.
39. Mark E. Blunck, 70.
40. In 2000, David Kruidenier, one of the original trustees of the Art
Center Board and part of the selection committees for the Pei and Meier
additions, was visited by Robert Stern concerning a possible donation to
the Yale School of Architecture. The meeting occurred at the Art Center in
the Meier-designed café and was attended by one of the authors.
Knowing the long-held criticisms of the Meier wing and Stern’s likely
differences of opinion with the design, Kruidenier asked Stern what he
thought of the Meier addition. Stern sidestepped the inquiry by replying
that he suspected Kruidenier was on the selection committee, and, being
aware of Meier’s extensive portfolio of work, asked him if he got the
building he expected. The conversation largely drifted to inconsequential
issues after this initial exchange.
41. Ann Wilson Lloyd, ‘‘A Sculpture of Sea and Prairie, of Water, Fire and
Stone,’’ The New York Times, July 21, 2002.
A Museum of Living Architecture: Continuity and 46
Contradiction at the Des Moines Art Center