Difficult Navigation: Analysis of Modern Wing’s Layout
From “Best of Chicago Art Magazine”, Dec. 2009
Feature by Susheela Bhat
Illustration by Melissa Wright
Sweeping in with the fresh spring air, the Art Institute of Chicago’s new building, The Modern Wing, designed by Renzo Piano, opened to the public earlier this year. With its two-story Griffin Court flanked by two three-story pavilions, the Modern Wing is breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and absolutely bewildering to navigate.
“Maybe they intended it, but there is no flow between the old building and the new building,” said David Jameson, owner of the ArchiTech Gallery, 730 N. Franklin St. “It’s kind of a maze getting around the Modern Wing.”
click to enlarge
Whether you walk in from the main building, or from the Modern Wing’s Millennium Park entrance, you are first greeted by Griffin Court, a brightly lit, long white corridor with high ceilings and light wood floors. At first glance the cathedral ceilings, enormous hall and brightness inspire the same reverent feeling you get when you walk into a church. You get over that fairly quickly though, as you wonder where to go.
Folded discreetly into the sides of Griffin Court are a few gallery spaces on the first floor. If you are careful not to blink, you can even find the bathroom tucked away modestly next to the Museum-side entrance (1), in a somewhat dark, red narrow hallway. That rabbit-hole, incidentally, does not lead to Wonderland, but the new Alsdorf Galleries in the old building (2).
According to Chai Lee, spokesman for AIC, Piano (the architect) believes in a clear division between public spaces and art spaces, which is why Griffin Court lacks any kind of artwork, and the galleries are filed away on the sides of the court.
Artistic vision aside, the real fun begins when you get to the second and third floors.
If you have depth-perception problems, you might want to avoid the stairs(3); the steps have almost no contrast and they are quite shallow. There is an elevator (4) nearby, though. Once you get to the second floor, there are galleries and a coffee shop. If you wanted to go to the old building from the second floor you would need to go through the coffee shop, through an exhibit, and down another rabbit hole of a hallway(5) before emerging into the old building. (No, unfortunately, still not Wonderland.)
But let’s say you wanted to fully explore the Modern Wing, and after looking around the coffee shop on the second floor, you decided to try the new Renzo Piano Restaurant on the third floor instead. You won’t be able to get to it from the second floor galleries; or the third floor galleries either; the only way to get to the third floor restaurant is to go back down to the first floor(6).
“It’s very convoluted to have to go down to go up…you have to go down to the first floor to get to the third floor [on the other side], and getting to the second floor [of the Modern Wing] from the old building by going through a coffee shop is confusing,” said Jameson.
Part of the problem is the size of AIC. “You couldn’t see the entire museum in one day, unless you had roller skates,” said Stanley Wood, a volunteer at AIC. To help guide the visitors, there are paper(7) and interactive touch-screen maps(8) available, signs on the walls (that blend nicely into the walls) and volunteers like Stanley Wood (they are easier to spot).
Along with the size of the museum, Wood, who has volunteered with AIC for seven years, says the Modern Wing is just plain confusing, and the maps do not always help, because they are complex. While AIC encourages its volunteers to be proactive about approaching visitors, they tend to stay on the first floor; chances are you will not find one of their helpful faces when you are trying to get to the third floor restaurant from the third floor gallery.
“I don’t believe these are insurmountable or unfixable problems,” said David Jameson, “Building a structure like this is not just artistically motivated, it’s also political. Given all of the agendas they had to achieve I think they did the best they could.”
That’s fine, but when you need to find a bathroom, hopefully you’re not in the Modern Wing.
Erm… wow. Brave cynicism. I guess I’ll see if Target will let me return that gift horse.
I imagine a journey — from the institutionally centered ordering of the Academic Tradition, toward the upheaval of Modernism — passing secretly and precisely through the coffee bars of 19th century Paris. (I imagine their coffees being half-full…)
I imagine the divergent, meandering “isms” of the early 20th century moving very much like a peripatetic maze of galleries—and I can imagine getting to the end and realizing there’s no turning back.
I can imagine a quickly fading reverence for institutional religion picking up steam in the 20th century as cultures begin to depart from the beaten path.
I can see a reason for the architectural division between public spaces and art spaces, like the fact that museums as we know them — even public and private space as we understand it — are essentially a Modernist invention.
And that’s why I tell my 5 year old not to wait until she absolutely has to go before saying so. Sometimes finding a bathroom should be an adventure.
Haha, maybe so Dayton, but when Nature calls, sometimes adventure is the last thing you want answering.
I think the vortex of confusing naviation isn’t the basic placement of the bathroom, but the twists and turns right before it. In that alcove, there were 4 of us spinning around, and I could hear echoes of people asking “do you know where the cafe is? Do you know where the water fountain is?”
If you were going to do a usability study, I would hang out at that spot.
There are doors from Gallery 291 into Gallery 288. Did anyone walk through the galleries before publishing this? Also, there are doors at the east end of Griffin Court directly into the original building. They lead into Gallery 150 and a right turn will take you into the Alsdorf Galleries.
Correction: The doors from Griffin Court to Gallery 150 are on the south end, rather than the east.