Riches Rivals & Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America

America is a land of great museums and every museum has spellbinding stories to tell America's great museums their stories are our stories join great museums and hosts Susan Stamberg for Rich's rivals and radicals 100 years of museums in America major funding for great museums is provided by the Eureka foundation dedicated to the educational power of television and new media exercise your curiosity explore America's great museums there may be more museums per square inch right here than anywhere else on earth here on our National Mall in Washington DC is the heart of the Smithsonian Institution the world's biggest museum complex in fact America is a land of museums coast-to-coast right in the middle of the mad dash of life America's museums are places of solitude sanctuary and discovery our museums reflect who we were who we are and who we hope to be I'm Susan Stamberg welcome to the world of America's museums the history of America's museum world is filled with all kinds of Tara's matic commanding characters focused sometimes obsessed people whose passions fueled the building of a veritable museum Empire Americans are a very acquisitive people we like our stuff and the kind of stuff that we like and the kind of stuff that we collect has changed as our society has developed and so to have museums the first museum on American soil was started in 1773 the Charleston Museum is older than the nation the idea was to capture the natural and material history of the Lowcountry 200 years later the museum's archaeologists are still digging history right out of the dirt as we get deeper hopefully we'll get a separate 19th century layer in a separate 18th century layer museums are not all the same there's some that are so traditional that a ripe with objects and long labels there are others that are really driven by technology and innovation each museum is like a person how the collections came to be the trustees were there are museums on buses there are museums on trains there are museums on both what you don't ever want to do is say there's one goal there's one path there's one Museum Charles Wilson Peale of Philadelphia is credited with founding the country's first public museum Peale made an heroic effort to attract visitors by linking patriotic history Natural History and art that could really be considered a great cabinet of curiosity it had Mastodon bones it had paintings guide to the wall before the Civil War PT Barnum's American Museum on Broadway in New York was probably the most popular museum in America in 1865 after the building went up in flames Barnum took his show on the road PT Barnum had objects like mermaids skeletons I mean it was real show business the business of politics propelled the Smithsonian Institution signed into law by President Polk in 1846 the founding donor James Smithson was an English scientist who never even visited the United States it is a classic American political compromise very broad in its mandate and today more than a dozen separate national museums each providing a piece of the mosaic that is the American identity that's the Smithsonian we are the Museum of the United States so we have a responsibility to the American people for half a century well beyond his death in 1799 George Washington was the American identity standing in front of his uniform at the Smithsonian National Museum of American history feels like a close encounter with the man himself when I worked at the Smithsonian one of the things I used to love to do was just go into the storage room one day opened a drawer and there was Lincoln's top hat opened another drawer there was the compass that Lewis and Clark carried initially there was simply one Museum at the Smithsonian a single United States National Museum now called the arts and industries building at one time it housed all of the Smithsonian's collections and one of my more favorite photographs are some of the airplanes over the top of the presidential china collection with the 1976 Bicentennial the planes got their own home at the national museum of air and space going from the Wright brothers through Lindbergh through the x-15 through the Apollo landing on the moon you make me realize that it's not that far elite from when we were only up for 15 seconds with the Wright Flyer to getting to the moon that this is not about great forces it's about individuals bringing creativity science hard work and a bit of luck to the table the history of museums in America is directly linked and parallel to all of the good things of a capitalistic society of serving improving and of maximizing everything in society in the late 19th century the museum building business in America was booming the catalyst for that was the driving sensibilities of a very few people and the massive massive immigration of people from Eastern Europe from Greece from Italy there are all kinds of concerns about urbanization and one solution that wealthy industrialists had was to found institutions so they founded hospitals they founded libraries and they founded museums the son of a poor Scottish Weaver Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Carnegie through his Gospel of wealth promoted the idea that successful capitalists were duty-bound to use their fortunes to improve society the great robber barons these are the robber barons who are plowing across the country they were certainly ruthless they were interested in their self aggrandizement they had enormous egos all of that I think is clear whether America would have had great collections without them is another question by the time he died in 1919 Andrew Carnegie had helped define the Industrial Revolution he had turned western Pennsylvania into the steel capital of the world and had accumulated and given away three hundred and fifty million dollars that's nearly four billion today others took up the cause as well their idea at that time was that the museum would turn America from this raw violent continent into a cultivated European aristocratic continent spending only a fraction of what Carnegie paid Isabella Stewart Gardner assembled an exquisite collection of masterpieces under the watchful eye of her adviser Bernard Berenson she was a radical she was a rabid Red Sox fan and she had a vision to create a Venetian Palace where people could go and see absolutely the finest art and she was going to do this in Boston and she bought certain works of art a work by Titian a certain work by Rembrandt she was very discerning she was very careful jpmorgan brings together all the images of the ruthless obsessive collector but tycoon collector he accumulates whole collections and he would buy whole collections Morgan also had taste and knowledge and he filled the Metropolitan with his work not only metropolitan but the was worth F&A and and of course the Morgan Library today the Metropolitan Museum of Art has over 5000 years worth of master works from every civilization every culture all under one roof when you study history you are reading about events but you are not experiencing them when you look at a great Chinese painting of the Ming Dynasty you are in a sense in the Ming Dynasty you've taken a time machine the picture is of that time of its time and of our time it's a magical experience you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Sunday or a Saturday or almost any other day at least I am struck by the enormous numbers of people who are there and who are there in many parts of the museum and the Egyptian galleries are in the Far Eastern galleries are looking at Lucy Anik art or wandering through the European painting section the Metropolitan Museum of Art is also credited with America's first blockbuster the Great King Tut exhibit over 55 glittering treasures from Egypt and it's set off King Tut mania the mastermind behind the King Tut exhibit was Thomas Hoving director of the Met in the 1970s he was crowned king of the blockbuster King Tut transformed the museum world but Museum mania began at the end of the 19th century with dinosaurs every time people have a new discovery of a dinosaur we're talking about the 1890s here we're talking about the 1900s it makes headlines it's a huge headline people line up and one of the interesting things is you get this competition between collectors right and when one collector like JP Morgan finances an expedition out to the western united states to collect dinosaur bones Andrew Carnegie's got a finance a larger expedition and his scientists unearthed a dinosaur that is at that point the largest find ever and it's taken back to Pittsburgh and it's put up in the Carnegie Institute and then copies casts of the dinosaur are made and they're actually distributed all over the world the biggest dinosaur hit of modern times was soon the t-rex at the Field Museum found by sue Hendrickson on disputed land in South Dakota dinosaur sue was auctioned to the highest bidder who's gonna get to actually exhibit this dinosaur who's gonna own this dinosaur and the Field Museum of Natural History teams up with corporations and actually buys this dinosaur and puts it on display thank goodness it ended up in a museum and in the public sphere John cotton Dana is one of the most important museum directors of the 20th century he is an unabashed he wrote a lot he talked a lot and he put his words into action in the Newark Museum the Newark Museum founded in 1909 set the stage for what would become the quintessential American museum how American museums would differ from their antecedents in Europe how they would relate to their communities how they would contextualize art how they would market themselves how they would become educational forces for change what was new about it he creates integrated art classes he creates apprenticeship programs for young women who want to go into museum careers when we had our first exhibition in 1911 of Tibetan work like the other collections that Dana was responsible for it not only includes the great Tonka's and sculpture but also objects of daily life so that comparisons could be made between cultures he shows American art he thought buying European art was a waste of money when he acquired a work by the artist Max Weber he wrote to Max Weber I don't know what you're trying to accomplish but that you should be doing it I have no doubt that I should be collecting it I have no doubt only if we support the art of American artists will it flourish cut from the same progressive cloth was the visionary philanthropist Julius Rosenwald president of Sears & Roebuck company he goes to Germany and he visits a museum called the deutsches museum and he sees for the first time scientific exhibition where you can touch things and you can push buttons and you can pull levers and he says I want to build one of those for Chicago and he comes back and he founds the Museum of Science and Industry and this is an ode to technological progress the museum opened in 1933 with the famous coal mine exhibit coal was fueling the Industrial Revolution them even today coal is the single largest source of electricity worldwide it was based in part on an actual coal mine with bit of theater added to it so you really felt like you were traveling a mile down in the earth they manufactured a special perfume that smelled just like a coal mine everybody has a role to play in science and industry and that was actually Julius Rosenwald goal was to interpret Science and Industry within the social context it always impacts people's life and that's the story we want to really explore here at the Museum nothing affected American Life more than the automobile and the assembly line in the 1920s Henry Ford's goal at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village was to preserve the evidence of American innovation and ordinary genius he actually buys up buildings from other towns and transports them to Greenfield Village so he buys the building where Thomas Edison invents the light bulb and he even buys soil samples from this building so that he can transport not only the building but also the soil at the same time john d rockefeller has a grand vision for preserving America's colonial past the project takes off in 1926 so john d rockefeller is of course the son of the first billionaire in America what he does is buys an entire town a crumbling town in Virginia called Williamsburg and the buildings become the objects the 1920 sees the flowering of America's great historic preservation movement this is when the term Americana is coined and then states start coining their own terms Texarkana and California Anna historic preservation began in the 1860s with the Mount Vernon ladies Society they saved George Washington's former home from vandals and decay but in the 1920s happy Rockefeller Lily bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan had a vision for the future while john d rockefeller was founding colonial williamsburg down in virginia his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was founding the nation's most important Contemporary Art Museum I was the youngest of six children so I spent a lot of time with mothers visiting museums and seeing paintings she was not only fond of contemporary art but the fact that she did enjoy a contemporary as well is perhaps the most unusual aspect the concept behind MoMA originally was to create a space where contemporary living artists could show their work amazingly MoMA was actually founded in 1929 as the Great Depression was taking hold one would think that the Great Depression was a very hard time for museums in this country ironically it wasn't it was a time of a flowering of museums Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration was essentially an Employment Program artists architects construction workers educators all found work in America's museums they built dioramas they built buildings they created murals they catalogued objects they built a vast new system of museums for the National Park Service and you get an infusion once again of this progressive educational ideology and then the fifties come and we get very conservative and then the sixties come and we swing back here and we're constantly walking this tightrope are we about elitist high cultural values or are we about appealing to everybody and I don't think there's an answer to that question and that's why museums embody what it means to be a democracy museums can teach history so you never forget it study after study has found that Americans trust museums more than they trust books more than they trust schools and I think that the reason for that is that we have the objects the jail cell where Martin Luther King wrote the letter the chair where Abraham Lincoln sat when he was assassinated one of my favorite objects at the Henry Ford Museum is the Rosa Parks bus this stuff that we have has importance to people because it is evidence irrefutable evidence and that's what objects are here is the physical tangible evidence that it is so but suppose there are no objects what then the history of african-americans in our country has whole chunks of their history not available in objects available in story form available in memory available and so on but not in objects that didn't stop Margaret and Charles Burroughs from starting a black history museum in their home just as the civil rights movement was revving up in 1961 when we opened up in my living room we started out with what we had because my husband Charles and I we had collected things from Africa and people began to bring us things you know once they knew what we were trying to do people would call me and I say you know my my uncle was a missionary in Liberia and he brought back some sculptures and all would you like to have them yes now there are over 125 black history museums throughout the country Detroit New York st. Louis and all of those places the fact that these things are growing and developing it gives you a good feeling it makes you healthier it keeps you younger Margaret Burroughs clearly opened doors wide for people like me and I know that I'm standing on those shoulders she says you have to understand our story to understand your story she recognized that what museums do more than anything else is a legitimise of people's culture and if you're not there you run the risk of being invisible in the 1980's the story of the great migration of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial north became very visible at the National Museum of American history from field the factory was not the first major exhibition to look at race in America but it was one of the most important because it was one of the first at the Smithsonian people thought well there's nothing of material culture of African Americans so you know what are you how I gonna do museum exhibitions it can be done with just a few key objects like the simple cabin of a black tenant farmer there is a part in the exhibition as you walk from the south to the north that you're going into a train station you have to choose which door whether it's the colored or white door at a time in America something as simple as skin color really determine what door you can go but I just love thinking about people who struggled and persevered and that's what I'm really interested in as a historian I'm not interested in the victories or even to defeats I'm interested in the resilience another story of perseverance is told in Washington DC at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum on the outside it appears to be a part of official Washington yet when you enter in through our doors you're transported into another universe into another time you're confronted with the imagery the symbolism the architecture of the Holocaust there are shapes that come from the crematorium twisted metal in the ceiling one of them really psychologically absenting things is that you never get to see the outside you get to see up you get to see fragments but you never get to see the outside in a tall narrow space designed to feel like a guard tower you're confronted with hundreds of pictures of Jewish life before World War two the Jewish inhabitants of this village were destroyed in two days in September 1941 bringing an end to about 900 years of Jewish history in that particular town this museum is created to be a story it was designed by theater producers it is a linear experience you cannot for example wander about as you can in the gallery of most museums and when you think about it wandering about is really a democratic decision that is you pick what you're gonna see and in what order and the Holocaust Museum it's really an autocratic decision you either go forward or you go home but there is no wandering about thank you simple objects at the Holocaust Museum tailed terrible stories ordinary metal bowls the dinnerware of the prisoners endless pairs of scissors confiscated from suitcases for recycling and a gross twisted pile of 4,000 shoes the shoes are placed in a very small area they are just leather and it's decaying but it means that when you enter this small place you smell them the power of smell in the presence of these touching artifacts and that is a jumble of people's shoes where you look at them and you realize how unprepared they were to die sandals and the equivalent of flip-flops it is so touching but it is so touching because you're also smelling it sadly the horrors of history never end the history of 9/11 is still broad at the New York City Fire Museum September 11th 2001 was a shattering day for the nation as the smoke is billowing up from the World Trade Center museum workers instead of going home are staying in their museums opening their doors offering food to people offering water to people telling people they can come in and that they will be safe here people are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in troubled times art becomes because it is such a constant through history a reminder that these times will change the pendulum will change and so tremendous reassurance and comfort arrives from seeing great works of art that also have emerged out of very difficult periods and and that has to give us a sense of of upheaved and of confidence a visit to a science museum can really rock your world we might go ah I got it I know why hurricanes are the way they are I know why a tornado is the way it is you have a personal aha phenomenon where you understand something that you've never understood before this is the critical angle exhibit a master of the aha moment in science museums was the legendary Frank Oppenheimer he was a brilliant physicist a wonderful spokesman and visionary very passionate Frank Oppenheimer had worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos he moved out to San Francisco in the late 1960s and in an old airplane hangar right on the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge he founded a new kind of science center called the Exploratorium and the story goes that he was putting a few exhibits on this floor of this vast airplane hangar like building and someone knocked on the door and it said are you open and he said well I guess so and opened the doors and and that was the beginning what Frank Oppenheimer had in mind was a new type of learning using real basic science and physics he started a revolution in science education he didn't want people to look at objects he wanted people to interact with objects the Exploratorium is made of a very basic phenomena in the natural world light waves bubbles the bands of color and an oil slick there's nothing here that isn't honest and basic the machine shop is the heart of the Exploratorium experience all of the exhibits are made in-house right on the exhibit floor what it does is it tracks with the light reflects off of me and it can sense where I then it just falls me back and forth I get to see the enthusiasm of the men and women who are making the exhibit they are like artists really and like lab scientists they are working very hard to understand themselves what what will make a very instructive playful exhibit for our public it's just because there's too much gain in the electronics but it actually it's so simple and yet it seems to have some amount of personality I new Frankenheimer when I first met him he asked me how often I went on the exhibition floor to watch the visitors participation and I said never and he walked me out onto the floor to say you're doing this for the visitor and you therefore have to watch what they're learning from what you're doing and you have to tinker with what you're doing until they understand it tinkering is the operative word at the Exploratorium and it is Frank Oppenheimer who coined this great phrase nobody flunked Museum this motto became a mantra throughout the world of science centers and children's museums the Children's Museum movement really comes of age in the early 1970s late 1960s you have parents who are becoming disenchanted with the public school system and are wanting to found museums where children can come and have educational experiences and they find the perfect spokesperson the perfect idealist the perfect passionate person is willing to pull this all together in 1962 at the Boston Children's Museum and that is Michael Spock Mike Spock is a legend he influenced the whole generation of museum educators Mike came along at a time where we needed a new paradigm for the museum experience if a art museum was about art if History Museum was about history if a trustee museum was about the Natural Sciences the children's museums were not about something they were for somebody it was a client centered institution and that was the breakthrough that was the thing that tied everything together it was for kids it was for their caregivers it was for teachers that dealt with science' dealt with our to dealt with history but it was for somebody and once that occurred to me everything then followed everything made sense kids have been lining up at children's museums for a long time the Brooklyn Children's Museum started in 1899 and the Boston Children's Museum in 1913 the model was instructional more like a classroom he transforms this museum into an interactive very experimental vibrant community space of activity and this is considered to be one of the the great experimental places that launches the Children's Museum movement we create all these new interactive exhibits where kids learned about real life and they learned about how a city works they learn how sewers worked how to understand the world in which they live kids are learning machines play is the way kids learn and you don't have to dismiss things as being playful they are it that's the real stuff that's going on there you're not trying on just the clothes you're trying on the business of being an adult of being grown up this is one of the few places that families go together and spend quality time together and I know we've created those landmark memories in a family's history deep landmark memories that are about learning and about enjoying each other I think we can say with confidence that play is learning and that is not a waste of time in some ways of the standard Museum forgotten that there were significant portions of its audience who didn't see themselves who didn't hear their stories didn't see their creativity sort of echoing on those walls but in the 1970s for the first time there are federal arts and humanities agencies that can funnel money to museums you see the founding of the Anacostia Museum in 1967 in Washington DC the wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle the El Museo del Barrio in New York City you get this tremendous surge of idealism in 1982 a high school teacher in South Side Chicago had a vision five years later Carlos turtle arrow was living his dream we don't want to rewrite history at this museum we're trying to talk his correctly for the first time so when that cheney thing for a lot of mexicans we didn't cross the border the border crossed us and we influence this country already in so many ways mexican fine arts center in chicago is the museum founded by a man with a singular passionate vision it sits in the middle of the community that it represents it is free and they do more than museum e things we have a radio center they have performances kids come we've always felt it's a point to be a part of the community most museums are a part from the community they're away from the community we want to be a part of the community the site of centuries of Mexican art from both sides of the border is an eye-popping adventure the roots of our culture come from the ancient past so to understand Mexican culture you have to start at the roots and that's where the digits culture is this fantastic mosaic has more than a million beads set in beeswax the museum commissioned it in 2003 from the wheat show people mountain villagers who are descendants of the Aztecs which others are one of the 57 interest groups a maker they speak don't language so some echo is about the culture country itself people forget about that the mosaic became a we Cho community project the whole village worked together for a year to complete it we will pay him like every month or so and they would use that money to buy beans rice corn for the community the only way we buy art we're helping to feed the town I think the magnificent idea but the magic of that piece is it was done by the whole town in the colonial gallery the story of Mexico when it was a Spanish colony plays out on a giant gold altar it's a piece that shows the history of maiko and it starts with the ancient time Fela digits people going this way the Spanish coming this way the piece is made of a paper mache it's all shopping bag a newspaper this ratty old farmers truck is a different symbol of devotion a moving tribute to the modern Mexican American hero activist says our Chavez such a Chavez appeared in the museum a week before he passed away this is the last place he spoke in the measurement for he passed away the tape of Chavez final speech she captures his undying passion look we can't show the tape inside the wall that's so cold so he bought a farmer construct and we put him in the back of the truck the screen in the monitor wood crates with our little party signs all around it to make it seem like he's at home and that's the whole point making people feel at home many people are afraid of institutions you know I am so afraid of institutions and I created one I've always had this thing that it's bigger something it's not for me so if I feel imagine people who have never walked into a museum in their life yeah so many some community who walks into this museum it took for the first time for the museum it's a brave step on the whole Native Americans spent a good deal of the 20th century trying to get away from museums the Native American community has been the single largest change agent in the museum world in the last half century culminating in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian it opened in 2004 Americans believed that the Native American culture had gone extinct you have anthropologists going out and just grabbing stuff digging up Graves and in some extreme cases actually accession alive human beings such as Ishi from California who lived in a museum so you've got these these terrible stories now tribal leaders can request and the law will require that sacred objects ancestral remains be returned or repatriated to the tribe we are talking about interpreting and representing living cultures and living peoples at the National Museum of the American Indian it's not just talking about a past that may have belonged to the life of native peoples it's talking about their present and their future and the fact that they are still here founding director Rick West is Cheyenne one of the things that request understood in the beginning was that if we were going to build a museum different as he called it we would have to ask Indian people about what kind of museum they wanted the museum tries to represent all of the more than 500 tribes in the US and the nearly 35 million Native people of Central and South America what they said was not more objects but an inviting place where cultural exchanges could happen the vast rotunda is that place but it's the cultural Resource Center in Maryland that's the soul of the museum here nearly 1 million objects are housed and used in tribal ceremonies traditional Native American believe holds that many objects are imbued with the spirit of the maker so special care even food light or water is sometimes required the central core issue about the National Museum of the American Indian is that Indians are telling you their view of the things and it's very new and different for non-indian America to understand that the things the same things they saw before can be talked about entirely too at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City 16 high school students are enrolled in an after-school program called Museum Studies and we invite them to take on the task of curating an exhibition so how do you pick works of art how do you decide which ones are the best works what are the criteria for that what will make a cohesive group of artworks to hang on the walls how will we show them to people how will we map them and frame them how do we think about writing labels for them these are all processes of course that go on in the museum more than a hundred years ago at the first meeting of the American Association of museums museum leaders asked the same questions they asked today how are we going to mount exhibits so that people will understand them how can use eum's be more educational how can use them serve children better museums have become public spaces where everyone's role is education and that mission is front and center at living museums where conservation is the name of the game in the 20th century the National Zoo's mission expanded to include the conservation of endangered species on a global basis even though you see the animal at the at the National Zoo on exhibit it's really part of a bigger picture the National Zoo works with other zoos and conservation organizations in a captive breeding program it's really an insurance policy against extinction among the most beloved of endangered species is the giant panda one of the biggest challenges we have in in the endangered species is just getting the particular animals we want to breed breeding right now we have about 15 giant panda males that breed naturally in the world so giant panda semen is frozen and kept on reserve when breeding doesn't happen the old-fashioned way these scientists are ready to step in with artificial insemination here's the sign of success when you study a species for so many years when you firmly finally have the first baby that is your babies and to know that you really made a difference is what makes important to me the New York Botanical Garden is a stunning oasis of natural beauty a grand Museum of plants the Enid a Haupt conservatory one of the last grand Victorian glass houses left in the world opened in 1902 in everything it does the garden is an advocate for the plant kingdom this garden has really stuck to its guns to its very important museum mission for its entire life of working very diligently on the science of the plants of the world the horticulture the growing the living collections and the education bringing the knowledge and the experience of all these plants to the public and what better sort of thing can you go home at the end of the day knowing that you've contributed to than that there's been a great deal of thinking about museum museum architecture over the last 25 years how do you build the ideal museum and what should that be America's greatest art museums have accepted the challenge of creating architectural icons that are the pride of their communities you need things that pop out museums become this coveted commission in the mid to late 90s and this is where your Frank Gehry's and your calatrava's and your Renzo Piano start building these incredible structures that stand out in a landscape across the pond on the shores of the Italian Riviera north of Genoa a glass elevator is the only way to reach the building workshop of architect Renzo Piano the workshop itself is the embodiment of light and transparency ideas that piano brings to all his designs with a new century comes a new vision a sparkling village for the Arts at the High Museum in Atlanta and the story we wanted to tell with this building is a story about art is by enjoying art is about preserving art and about seeing the art you cannot bring natural light by sight on the one day Museum otherwise you are blinded the only way to bring natural light in the room in the space for art is from above from the top up on the rooftop of the highs new galleries row after row of hooded skylights 1001 skylights collect the safe Northern Light and channel it down to the new galleries below is bit like the opposite of sunflower the sunflower look for life from the South and you have to look for light from the north and the reason is very simple because by doing this you don't have dire Sun inside but that's not all piano reshapes an entire block on Peachtree Street into a village for the Arts carving the center into a plaza for eating walking shopping enjoy but there is a moment then when you mentally take your shoes off you change the speed you go up and you find yourself in the different donation that is by definition silent is a silent dialogue and in that silent Allen must be protected otherwise you you may forget the reason why a museum is a museum this is the earliest permanent Museum building in this country it was built in 1842 in Hartford Connecticut to house the collections of the wodsworth Athenaeum America's first public art museum the idea in those days was to create a protective sense of enclosure like a Romanesque or gothic castle the Smithsonian's first building from 1851 is even called the castle it's story shows that right from the beginning star architects were itching to have a museum under their belts there is a competition and the competition is won by the architect James Renwick Washington is a city with white marble classical architecture and what you have for the Smithsonian is this very radically different red sandstone complex Chariton medieval looking building talk about radical in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts the exuberant Frank furnace wrapped everything he could think of into the building right next to motifs made with modern machinery he actually leaves the raw materials exposed for all to see not unusual today but this was 1876 you enter a dark cavernous area and suddenly there's a skylit 30-foot bright blue ceiling speckled with silver stars that explodes into a well of light with space and up in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who would guess that at its core the Mets Victorian home still stands the exterior wall is now interior its Cathedral like space first opened in 1880 now houses part of the Mets medieval collection today's Met stretches 1,000 feet along Fifth Avenue in Central Park an icon of the splendid bows arts style a richer more ornate version of classical Greek and Roman architecture neoclassical a temple museums form most people's sense of what a traditional museum looks like there's a pediment there are columns there's a great set of stairs leading to the main entrance it's built of stone in 1939 turning architecture on its head New York's Museum of Modern Art designed by Goodwin and stone was the first truly modern museum up until this point museums had been located in parks to really mimic this idea of aristocracy the crew at the Museum of Modern Art said no we're going to move into the core of the city we are going to build in a new architectural style and we're gonna even coin the name for this style and it's called the International style no longer do you go up huge flights of stairs into a European Palace you walk in right from the sidewalk for its 75th birthday MoMA called upon the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi to reinvent the museum for the 21st century and he came up with a number of brilliant solutions for us not the least of which was to recognize that our greatest opportunity lay in embracing the city and by opening the museum up to the city through wind views and endless opportunities to look at and across the garden you would become conscious of the way in which the museum fit into the city it was knitted into the urban fabric the grid of Manhattan on the other side of the country in San Francisco the de Young Museum of Art California's first and largest art museum has been born again in Golden Gate Park it was created as part of the 1894 1895 midwinter Fair and through the rebuilding of the de Young we give to the city a great piece of architecture a great new museum for the hundred years looking forward basking in sunlight and success the new Dion connects with its historic landscape like an element of nature the moment that people came in the life was just you know infused into it and I think that the public has told us now how much they love it and that makes me feel really great the excitement of America's museums is not the fleeting buzz of a roller coaster ride but the life-changing thrill of knowing you crave them you're going there because they're important at a very deep and primitive level having the real stuff the real things in their collections real experiences with those real things it is there's no substitute for them and so I think museums who have got it made American museums are a treasure beyond price the best thing I could say is take advantage of them use them make them your second home what I love more than anything else is that when museums work it means that the public owns the history the science the art and boy there's nothing more special than that to order the DVD of this program or the riches rivals and radicals companion book called one eight seven seven two two six three zero three four or visit great museums org museums connect us to the great history and mystery of life and civilization learn more about the American Association of museums at great museums origin America's great museums their stories are our stories major funding for great museums is provided by the Eureka foundation dedicated to the educational power of television and new media exercise your curiosity explore America's great museums

Channel: Great Museums

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Keywords: stamberg, smithsonian, museum, modern, art, moma, painting, sculpture, history, barnum, montebello, carnegie, gardner, metropolitan, tut, dinosaur, newark, science, industry, ford, greenfield, rockefeller, williamsburg, african-american, dusable, holocaust, fire, franklin, exploratorium, education, children, spock, culture, mexico, chavez, american, indian, zoo, panda, botanical, renzo, architect, architecture, atheneum, taniguchi, atlanta, documentary

Id: HUIt27iqjLA

Length: 56min 42sec (3402 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2009