I visited the Museum of Modern Art recently and my experience there got me thinking about something I’d never really thought about before…

What’s the model for a museum? Should the museum be like a library, a space set aside for quiet work or study? Or should it function differently, embracing a more crowded, boisterous environment in line with a mandate to be popular, relevant and accessible to a broad base of people?

Looking around the galleries at MOMA, you’ll see an odd disconnect between two types of visitors. On the one hand, you’ll see children playing, tourists posing for snapshots, people chatting; on the other, visitors wanting to seriously consider the work on view. It’s really kind of an odd sight to see: two classes of museum visitors with two vdery different sets of attitudes and agendas.

Over the years that I’ve visited museums, I’ve been both types, sometimes visiting by myself and wanting to concentrate on the art, sometimes going with friends and talking (about art, but about other things, too).

I’d suggest a friendly challenge to curators and staff at the larger, more heavily-visited museums: visit your museum’s galleries at a time when they’re moderately busy and try to focus on the art amidst the activity around you.

Of course, it’s clear that museum administrators have made a lot of efforts to make musuems more of a spectacle type of environment for the purpose of increasing attendance. With some musuems, the strategy seems to be extremely successful. MOMA, for example.

Given the success of this strategy, you have to wonder whether there’s any room left for the art museum’s core mission: allowing space for people to reflect on the art on display.

I don’t mean to single out MOMA…You’ll find quite noisy, crowded and somewhat chaotic circumstances at any large museum that attracts a lot of tourists, families and visitors who come primarily to socialize. The Metropolitan Museum qualifies, too, as does the Getty in Los Angeles. It’s really only in the smaller museums with specialized collections and fewer visitors that you’ll find an environment more conducive to looking seriously at the art.

Clearly, MOMA, and all of the great art museums, make exceptional efforts to curate shows that are intelligent, serious and thought-provoking. To me, the issue here is less one of curatorial decisions than it is space planning, traffic flow, etiquette and related administrative issues.

Would it work for museums to establish a quiet time? Not every museum needs to do this (some are quiet and uncrowded enough as is), but some museums should absolutely consider doing so.

In these dog days of summer in New York, I’ve been enjoying a recently-published book from Princeton Architectural Press titled Finnish Summer Houses.

I just saw the exhibit on prefab architecture at MOMA – that show and the themes of this book correspond nicely.

I was interested to learn that Finnish architects (dating back to before World War I) took on summer home projects to work out some of the same problems that prefab designers have tackled: designing small dwellings that make the most of limited space; building multi-functional rooms; and building small, “cellular spaces” that can be later added on to.

Architects such as Alvar Aalto built his Muuratsalo Experimental House to test innovative materials and surfaces. Aarno Ruusuvuori worked with prefabricated room elements, used concrete in expressive ways, and incorporated features that allowed dynamic interplay with water and forest surrounding his Ruusuvuori cabin and sauna in Kerimaki.

Appropriate for a region with a brief flourish of summer followed by long, cold winters, Finland has a tradition of summer houses, stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century. In the 19th century, Finns would move into their summer homes for the entire season, and farming was often one element of the lifestyle.

At first limited to the wealthy, self-consciously modeled after Swiss, Italian or English villas, with day-to-day functioning handled by servants, the 20th century saw a revised and updated version of the vacation homes as they became accessible to a growing, more prosperous, and more mobile middle class.

The new century brought mass transportation, access via family car, and a commuter- weekend approach to enjoying the homes. Rusticity, folk motifs and design references to Finland’s pre-modern past began to be incorporated….even as new building materials, new designs for new ways of living, and modernist design strategies were being used.

The tradition continues into the present, with homes such as the Weekend Atelier in Puolarmaari, designed by Juha Kaakkko, et al., which makes use of a translucent plastic exterior covering, filtering sunlight and reflecting the shadows of foliage, dynamically interacting with nature — a goal of these summer homes since their earliest days.

On the list of annoyances faced by the New York City pedestrian –a very long list — construction scaffolding has to be near the top.

Construction is occurring all over the city and wherever it happens, scaffolding is sure to accompany it. Ostensibly, it’s there to shield pedestrians from the hazards of falling materials and moving equipment.

Unfortunately, it also funnels pedestrians down dark, narrow passage ways, constricts already-limited sidewalk space, accumulates litter, construction debris and storm water runoff, obstructs the view of traffic signs, and turns city streets into ugly hodgepodge assemblages of makeshift plywood, tacked-on legal notices, spray paint and advertising.

The example in the photo above (taken on Bethune Street in the West Village) isn’t the worst example…just a typical one, with the “Something Superior” tagline adding an extra bit of irony.

Even though I live in New York, I enjoy reading blogs and news articles about urban planning, traffic, and assorted urban lifestyle issues/problems in Los Angeles.

In part, this is because I grew up in LA and still have a lot of affection for the place. I also sometimes think of moving back there, and I take particular interest in keeping track of the problems that Angelenos face living in their city in this early part of the 21st Century.

Lately — because of the recent huge leap in gas prices, and because of the residential development of downtown LA and debates about expanding LA’s public transportation system — Los Angeles residents have been discussing and debating urban conundrums that New Yorkers have been juggling for years: the joys and sorrows of taking public transit, of living in apartments instead of houses, of walking, etc.

Here’s a recent example from yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, written by Julie Makinen. It nicely describes how shopping, entertainment and other daily habits change when people give up cars and move from the suburbs to the city.

Last Saturday’s New York Times featured a very good report on photojournalism and the war in Iraq.

Citing soldiers’ and families rights, and privacy and security issues, the military imposes significant limits on photographers’ work; at the same time, newspapers are choosing not to run graphic images, as a matter of policy.

The article tells the story of Zoriah Miller, who was barred from photographing in Marine-controlled areas of Iraq, after photographing Marines killed in a suicide attack in 2006. Astonishingly (to me, at least), the military is seeking to bar Miller from photographing at military facilities anywhere in the world.

Some examples of the military’s rationale for censoring specific images or barring photographs:

• “…Mr. Miller provided our enemy with an after-action report on the effectiveness of their attack and on the response procedures of U.S. and Iraqi forces,” said Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, a Marine spokesman.
• In another example, two New York Times photographers were forbidden from continuing their work as embedded photojournalists because they didn’t ask prior permission of a gravely wounded soldier who had been shot in the head before they took his photograph. Embed rules written in 2007 require written permision of wounded military personnel, before photos of them can be displayed.

That a photograph could constitute an “after-action report” would make almost every great example of war photojournalism impermissible, from Mathew Brady’s civil war images, to Robert Capa’s D-day photos to Larry Burrough’s Vietnam War images.

The article includes a slideshow of Iraq war images, including both millitary and civilian dead and wounded, and they are indeed disturbing images…but the images, as awful as they are, help to tell Americans, and others around the world the full and complete story of the war in Iraq.

The NPR radio program “On the Media” recently did an interview with Miller.

187 (on left) and 185 Bowery

When I learned that there’s a cluster of old buildings on Bowery slated to be torn down, I decide to walk over and take a look at them.

I probably should have written: “When I learned about the latest cluster of old buildings to be torn down on Bowery, I decided to walk over and take a look.”

That’s because buildings dating back to the early to mid-nineteenth century have been being torn down on Bowery for the last four or five years.

The contiguous set of buildings I looked at today are located at 185, 187, 189 and 191 Bowery. They were purchased by Brack Capital. Brack develops condominiums and hotels, so it seems likely that they’ll be torn down for a new condo or hotel development.

Three of the four buildings frankly speaking aren’t very distinguished-looking…No. 185 is by far the most appealing, with a dormer window, oval windows in front and wrought iron details decorating the windows.

Of course, you wonder whether architectural details or other treasures might be hidden beneath successive layers of change and renovation in the other three buildings.

It would be easier to welcome new construction if the new buildings being built in Manhattan in recent years weren’t, almost without exception, condominiums, hotels, or shops intended for a tiny fraction of extremely wealthy residents of New York or equally wealthy visitors.

At various times, going back over 150 years, there was a druggist at 191 Bowery; the American Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, Ocean headquarters No. 69, at 189 Bowery; the Germania Bank at 185 Bowery (as the bank prospered, it moved to progressively larger buildings on Bowery — the Bank’s former location at 190 Bowery got landmark status in 2005).

Searching these Bowery addresses in the New York Times archive, you encounter a vanished world of Courriers’ Union meetings, cigar stands, keno gambling dens, “Knights of Labor,” etc.

One tenant at 185 is still living in the building. Earlier this month, the New York Observer covered her story.

The iconic landmarks and essential character of a city may be constructed within extremely brief, intensive leaps of development, taking place in an amazingly short period of time…

Writing in Vanity Fair, Kurt Andersen compares early 21st century Beijing with turn-of-the-20th-century New York:

…What early-21st-century Beijing…deeply resembles is New York at the turn of the 20th century. That’s the moment at which modern New York was inventing itself by showstopping leaps and bounds—swallowing adjacent cities and towns and farms, booming in population, and erecting what would become its defining landmarks…

The total area that American lawns take up is equivalent to the area of the entire state of New York…and they require an amazing amount of water.

From the New Yorker:

The essential trouble with the American lawn is its estrangement from place: it is not a response to the landscape so much as an idea imposed upon it—all green, all the time, everywhere. Recently, a NASA-funded study…determined that, including golf courses, lawns in the United States cover nearly fifty thousand square miles—an area roughly the size of New York State….In order to keep all the lawns in the country well irrigated, the author of the study calculated, it would take an astonishing two hundred gallons of water per person, per day…nearly a third of all residential water use in the United States currently goes toward landscaping.

Via Curbed LA: Strange but true…There was actually an elevated, bicycle “freeway” in Southern California. Built in 1900, named the Horace Dubbins Cycleway, the wooden path connected Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles.

• “California’s great Cycle-Way” (article published at the time the cycleway was functioning)
• Article from the “Metropolis” web site

I was browsing the web site of the American Diner Museum and I saw links to several items about the Moondance Diner. In 2007, the diner was moved from its longtime home at the corner of 6th Avenue and Grand Street, New York to the little town of La Barge Wyoming.

I never visited the diner when it was on 6th Avenue, but I walked by many times.

It looks like they’re still working on renovating it, but you can follow the progress via the owners’ blog.

The Casper Star Tribune put together a video about the relocation and about the new owners. In the video, one of the owners’ mentioned hearing about other East Coast diners being moved out West, as the diners get displaced from their original locations by new development.

Relocation is an interesting subcategory of historic preservation. It’s great in that it preserves historic structures (that would be lost otherwise), but then again (obviously) it removes the structure from its original context and constituency.