museumification

...garage sale as museum...

joke from the early 1980s:
A: What comes after museum?
Q: pre-shrine
--[dis]content .20

Museum as future-shock, sort of. Pick your destiny.
--Positive notes

Use your museums, especially if they're not there to begin with.
--2009.01.19

2009.01.19
museum musings
The impossibility of using has its emblematic place in the Museum. The muse[um]ification of the world is today an accomplished fact. One by one, the spiritual potentialities that defined the people's lives--art, religion, philosophy the idea of nature, even politics--have docilely withdrawn into the Museum. "Museum" here is not a given physical space or place but the separate dimension to which what was once--but is no longer--felt as true and decisive has moved. In this sense, the Museum can coincide with an entire city (such as Evora and Venice, which were declared World Heritage Sites), a region (when it is declared a park or natural preserve), and even a group of individuals (in so far as they represent a form of life that has disappeared). But more generally, everything today can become a Museum, because this term simply designates the exhibition of an impossibility of using, of dwelling, of experiencing.
Thus in the Museum, the analogy between capitalism and religion becomes clear. The Museum occupies exactly the space and function once reserved for the Temple as the place of sacrifice. To the faithful in the Temple--the pilgrims who would travel across the earth from temple to temple, from sanctuary to sanctuary--correspond today the tourists who restlessly travel in a world that has been abstracted into a Museum.
Giorgio Agamben, "In Praise of Profanation" (2007).

2009.02.0110:37
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)

Gordon loves it even more like that.

As does Aldo.

architectures in the space-time continuum

2009.02.02 13:07
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)
the ugly and the ordinary
the extraordinary
both deserve an appropriate response
and then/now there's museumification
dossier in brief:
(at least) a Philadelphia tradition:
Cedar Grove and contents
Letitia Street House
Hatfield House
Briar Hill library and contents
Period Rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Japanese House
Étant donnés
1977.02 antidote:
"If someone in the museum was truly interested in my work they would let me cut open the building. The desire for exhibiting the leftover pieces hopefully will diminish as time goes by. This may be useful for people whose mentality is oriented toward possession. Amazing, the way people steal stones from the Acropolis."   --Gordon Matta-Clark
1993:
Robert Venturi, "Some Agonizing Thoughts about Maintainance and Preservation Concerning Humble Buildings of the Recent Past"
1998:
"Do you know the BASCO sign is now gone?"
"No! Do you know where it is now? We'd like to save it."
1999.10.06
A typed letter signed by Robert Venturi, wherein he laments the demolition of his BASCO 'baby', is currently up for auction at eBay
2000:
"What's the address of the Nurses' Office in Ambler?"
"It's better now if you just look at the pictures."
[found the building and took my own pictures anyway]
2002.11.23
Monument Hystérique
2004.12.17
"Took pictures of soon to be quondam building; visited museum exhibit without the museum building there yet; entered room that moved from inside one Trumbauer building to inside another Trumbauer building. Where do I get my best ideas?"
2005:
Best Building demolished; flower pattern porcelain enamal panels saved, many now in private and museum collections
2009.01.02
Lieb House; another chapter in the architecture of removement.   4708

2009.02.02 14:37
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)
I'd say that the Lieb House is now a museum peice. That's how the building's context has now changed. Villa Savoye hasn't moved, but its context has changed as well. It hasn't been a residence in many years, and it too is now a museum peice.
4708

2009.02.06 10:08
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)
[I'd say] Museumification sometimes "has a way of nostalgically applying aesthetic qualities that were not present in the origin."
It is becoming more clear what Agamben means by "everything today can become a Museum, because this term simply designates the exhibition of an impossibility of using, of dwelling, of experiencing."
The antidote then may well be to simply use museums. And in that sense, the Lieb House has now been museumified, but, if and when it reaches its ultimate destination, it will then be used as a guest house.
4708

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