The Apollo Awards have been celebrated since 1992 with fine ceremonies. It’s still as important as ever to celebrate outstanding achievements in the museum world. Yet senior museum commentators warned that museum culture may not endure with its current sense of purpose; funding for both national and regional institutions being squeezed still further. Thus the awards proclaim the museums have set the standards to which others should aspire.
Carnavalet Paris
C16th Renaissance architecture
Urban Sider
Each year, in selecting Museum Opening of the Year, Apollo Magazine judges created a shortlist of six museums. In 2021, the following museums were shortlisted.
1. Casa Balla Rome, opened June 2021. From 1929 til he died in 1958, Giacomo Balla lived in this Roman flat Via Oslavia. Having been left to his daughters, the flat was a living laboratory for the Futurist’s work, its walls, furniture and utensils one big canvas. Casa Balla was opened to the public for the first time.
2. Denver Art Museum, re-opened Oct 2021. Its display space greatly improved with the refurbishment & expansion of Gio Ponti’s fortress-like building, first opened 50 years ago. It gained a Welcome Centre & new conservation studios. And its galleries have been rehung to reflect aspects of DAM’s holdings, from Latin American art to Alaskan art.
3. Humboldt Forum Berlin, opened July 2021. After long delays and a cost of c€644m, this reconstruction of the C18th Berlin Palace, damaged by the Soviets after WW2, finally opened. Now there is a permanent display of the collections of the former Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst.
4. Kunsthaus Zürich, re-opened Oct 2021. After 12 years of planning, construction and £163m spent, David Chipperfield’s extension to Kunsthaus Zürich has doubled its space for showing art made since 1960. And note the works by Monet, Degas and Van Gogh from the collection of Emil Georg Bührle. It’s now the largest art museum in Switzerland!
5. Musée Carnavalet Paris, re-opened May 2021. At Baron Haussmann's urging, his hôtel particulier in the Marais housed a 1880 museum dedicated to Paris’ history. After a expensive (€50m) five-year redesign, Carnavalet displaying more of its collection, rangeing from C18th interiors to burning Notre-Dame 2019
The ceiling, Salons La Riviere by Charles Le Brun,
Carnavalet
The Museum Opening of the Year winner in 2021 was announced. Carnavalet Museum was always an impressive Parisian museum, full of antiquarian clutter. Its atmosphere is inseparable from its history, as the unexpected by-product of Baron Haussmann’s tough levelling of swathes of the city. Out of that destruction arose the desire to conserve, albeit somewhat haphazardly.
Carnavalet’s collections were shaped by its donors’ eccentricities, whose relics of French history took many forms. Since it opened to the public in 1880, the museum’s holdings have rapidly grown, unsystematically. Every Carnavalet fan has a favourite corner of the museum eg the miniature ivory Guillotines, crammed into the Revolutionary Memorabilia annex.
Carnavalet gallery
The reopened museum created a more accessible visitor experience without sacrificing the sense of discovery. Enter via a hall full of shop signs from over the centuries, a vibrant record of historic Parisian trades. The museum's chronological scope has been expanded; a visit that used to begin in the C16th now goes into a basement with relics of Neolithic Paris. And the museum pushes into the contemporary, with exhibits linked to the recent terrorist attacks and the fire of Notre-Dame.
Wendel Ballroom
Carnavalet
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26 comments:
Hello Hels, It seems that now more than ever museums are in peril, with acquisition policies tending toward turnstile counts and famous-name-only acquisitions, and art scholarship and the art itself often being put in mothballs in order to create a Disney-like experience in the most august museums. So these awards are timely indeed. I think that I would really love the Carnavalet museum, with its mixture of real art, Parisian history, and the oddities that accumulate over time.
--Jim
p.s. My spell checker tried to change the Carnavalet museum to the Carnality museum--I'll bet that one would get a lot of gawkers.
Hello, Helen! It's great that new museums open at the present time!
This museum is so classic and expensive to maintain for sure.
It's wonderful that the museum was restored, it looks good, Hels.
I love looking at old and fancy buildings while being thankful I don't have to clean them. Some museums are interesting to me, others not, it depends on what they display. Adelaide's South Australian museum is showing a collection of Viking Age objects from February 7th to late July. I like Vikings, so if I remember by then I'll go and see it.
What happened to the museum improvements during the long Covid lockdowns? 2021 was not a great year for many museums.
The Wendel ballroom is astonishing. Museums must be engaging if they are to survive, so knowledgeable curators are needed to ensure that aretefacts are displayed in eye-catching ways.
Parnassus
Carnavalet was used from the 16th century onwards, and although the facade and portals were given lush layers of Renaissance sculpture, it inevitably needed lots of improvement over time.
In 1880 the building became the Museum of the History of Paris. And even more fortunately it is one of Paris' museums that was included over the last decade in the public institution Paris Musées. However once it totally closed for 5 years, noone could go in. Now would be a great time to visit.
Bom dia é o bicho-preguiça.
Irina
I agree. In times of fatal floods, bushfires, wars and other tragedies, collecting and protecting cultural heritage is easily overlooked.
roentare
as keen as all historians and fans of cultural history are to preserve the treasures before they disappear, the money is staggering. When half the people in the world don't have decent houses, it is difficult to ask governments for $250 million to improve one museum. This might be the only time I would say private funding could be acceptable.
Caution has widely triumphed over urgency. On 19 May, the Old Masters Museum in Brussels was the country’s first federal museum to open, its halls suited to social distancing, but other reopenings in the city will be staggered through the summer. Museums in Austria have been allowed to open since mid May, although major institutions like the Albertina and Kunsthistorisches Museum are waiting. The Hong Kong Museum of Art has been consulted by several Western museums. It first closed in January, partially reopening in March before a resurgence of coronavirus cases in the region. Its second reopening in May was more ambitious, making roughly half its galleries accessible to give space to spread out. Like most Asian institutions, it is taking temperatures at the entrance and providing disinfectant mats for shoes etc
River
there was no Australian museum in the 2021 list of nominations, even though some are truly special. One that I inspected closely in the last month of blog posts was the Wool Museum in Geelong. However now I will go back to Apollo Awards that were given since 1992, if I can find the lists, and look for Australian museums.
jabblog
to maximise the visitor's experience in an unfamiliar museum (at home or abroad), here are some important recommendations:
1.read about the collections on line, before leaving home.
2.be guided around the collection by a knowledgeable curator, as you say.
3.buy a museum handbook as you leave. Our middle aged brains tend to need reminders after a while, even of collections that were wonderful.
Luiz
you are a great fan of museums in Brazil. Have you seen any of your national or local museums nominated on Apollo's Museum Opening of the Year list?
I have never heard of the Apollo Awards, seems to be awards for a bloody lot of things. I love visiting museums and there are some amazing ones around. Tim didn't think much of museums once but after me dragging him to a few that changed.
Jo-Anne
When I was working and had money, Apollo was my absolute favourite magazine. Its spread of articles was wonderful.
My husband was also too busy to visit museums. So I have taken the grandchildren instead :)
Hello Hels
I wasn't aware of this award or the magazine. Sounds like a good idea.
I wonder what else you could do to get more excitement among the public to visit museums, as you say, they're usually strapped for cash.
Need to visit those musuems at some point.
I'm planning to go to Turkey (to see some Byzantine art) .. and Florence in the coming year. :)
Ryan
Istanbul is a great choice. Apollo June 2023 published the following: The newly reopened Istanbul Modern looms over the Bosphorus, an inverted pyramid of glass and metallic cubes perched atop metal stilts. Designed by Renzo Piano, the building is a spectacular, sleek structure. The best moments I spend inside are when I catch the distinctive turquoise of the river through the windows and the silhouette of the old city behind it...
Margaret
If the art, architecture and culture of French history appeal to you, you will really enjoy Carnavalet. I might go to Dutch cities next, to explore museums and galleries of their stunning 17th century.
I love musuem of all kinds. Have you been to any of there museum.
I love museums. There are so many great ones to visit too. I haven't been to any on that list, at least so far :) Have a great new week.
I love that museum . Its so quirky and its location and size so charming . Its a wonderful part of Paris , My favorite I think . A visit to the Carnevalet followed by inner in Rue Des Rosiers just wonderful
peppylady
I wonder if the nominated museums tend to come from lesser known organisations, because apart from Zurich's museums, I barely recognise some of the names.
Mind you, in 2023 the New South Wales Gallery won, a place I visited many times pre-Covid.
Erika
Even though museums and galleries are mostly internal, I tend to do all my walking projects in summer. Thank goodness summer starts in a fortnight :)
mem
Can you get overseas to the cities of your dreams as often as you'd like, these days? Apart from Covid and wars in Europe, this poor retired soul has to be much more careful with money.
Thankfully Australian and New Zealand sites still appeal greatly :)
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