Comments on: Difficult Navigation: Analysis of Modern Wing’s Layout

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:30:21 +0000

Correction: The doors from Griffin Court to Gallery 150 are on the south end, rather than the east.

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:25:01 +0000

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.

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:41:07 +0000

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.

By: Susheela Bhat

Susheela Bhat — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:37:23 +0000

Haha, maybe so Dayton, but when Nature calls, sometimes adventure is the last thing you want answering.

By: Dayton Castleman

Dayton Castleman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:57:15 +0000

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.