Byline: Allison Eckardt Ledes
In this age of museums expanding into new buildings, it is rewarding to see more than one institution electing to move into an existing building of architectural interest rather than tearing it down and starting anew. The Portland Art Museum in Oregon is the newest kid on the block in this respect, joining museums such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. The Portland building in question is a Masonic temple constructed in 1925. This very distinctive building type is characterized by eclectic rooms that collectively form an encyclopedia of aspects of style in interior decoration.
Portland’s 141,000-square-foot temple, for example, includes elaborate interiors in the Moorish, Jacobean, Greco-Roman, and Georgian revival styles. Ann Beha Architects of Boston, which is noted for its sympathetic restoration work, is the principal firm for the three-phase project that started in 1994 and has just been completed. The renovated temple has office space, a library, and a film center, in addition to exhibition space for the museum’s photography collection and the Center for Modern and Contemporary Art. The nucleus of the center is the Clement Greenberg Collection of painting and sculpture, which was recently accessioned en bloc. The North Building, as it is now called, is connected to the museum’s other building by a sculpture court and by an underground passageway.
Soon after the North Building opens on October 1, the museum will host an ambitious loan exhibition opening on October 29. Entitled Hesse: A Princely German Collection, the show includes more than four hundred works drawn from the collections amassed since the Middle Ages by this important German noble family. Among the objects on view are paintings, sculpture, antiquities, silver, furniture, arms and armor, textiles, ceramics, glass, books, prints, and scientific instruments that are permanently housed in the four Hesse family castles located near Frankfurt and still owned by the family and its foundation. They are Wolfsgarten, Schloss Fasanerie, the Darmstadt Schloss Museum, and the Darmstadt Porcelain Museum. The objects have been selected by Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, the guest curator of the exhibition.
The princely state of Hesse was located in what is now the center of modern Germany. The Hesse dynasty has its origins in the thirteenth century, and by the time Philipp I (the Magnanimous), landgraf von Hesse, inherited the title in the sixteenth century, strategic alliances had made the principality one of the largest and strongest in the German-speaking lands. Like all noble families in Europe, each successive generation had its particular strengths and interests, ranging from military and political pursuits or religious reform to encouraging the arts. In the cultural realm, for example, Friedrich II, landgraf von Hesse-Kassel, established the first museum on the continent in 1779. As Protestants, the Hessian princes shied away from arranging marriages with Catholic rulers. Instead they sought out members of the royal families of Scandinavia, Russia, and England, as well as Protestant German noble families.
By the eighteenth century social conventions and court life followed the pattern established by French kings, particularly Louis XIV. Members of the court moved from one palace to another according to the season and constructed residences to which they repaired specifically for hunting. These large-scale buildings required elaborate ornamentation and furnishings, encouraging the patronage of cabinetmakers and other craftsmen who spent their entire careers working for members of the court. Some landgrafs had more than an economic interest in the decorative arts. In 1761, for example, Ludwig VIII of Hesse-Darmstadt, had the faience factory Kelsterbach converted to the manufacture of porcelain, which was an unprofitable undertaking. His son, Ludwig IX, in the interest of profitability, returned the factory to the manufacture of faience in 1768.
France set styles into the nineteenth century when the Empire style, chiefly created by the designers Charles Percier and Pierre Francois Leonard Fontaine, became influential in the German states. When the Biedermeier style emerged almost simultaneously, it was adopted only by the middle class. Later in the century, largely under the enlightened patronage of Ernst Ludwig, landgraf von Hesse, the city of Darmstadt became a center for the style known as Jugendstil, or art nouveau. Using the principles espoused by William Morris and his followers, Ernst Ludwig established an artist’s colony outside the city. More recently members of this family have devoted themselves less to acquisition and more to the challenging job of preserving the buildings and collections established by their ancestors.
The catalogue of the exhibition is by Hunter-Stiebel with contributions by Christine Klossel, Jochen Sander, Markus Miller, Joann M. Skrypzak, and Rainer von Hessen. It may be ordered from the museum by telephoning 503-276-4204.
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