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12/5/12 Yale Moves to Preserve Center for British Art - NYTimes.com
1/4www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/arts/artsspecial/yale-moves-to-preserve-center-for-british-art.html?pag…
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Care for Young Buildings
Richard Caspole
PRESERVATION PLAN The facade of Yale’s Center for British Art.
By JANE L. LEVEREPublished: October 26, 2012
One shrine of the architect Louis Kahn is the Yale Center for British
Art in New Haven. Completed in 1977, three years after Kahn’s death,
it achieves its distinction “by modest and subtle means,” says Jules
David Prown, the center’s first director: “perfect proportions,
sensitively matched materials, honest expression of structure.”
Evidently, the American Institute of Architects agrees. In 2005 it
bestowed its TwentyFive Year Award on the Yale Center, given to a
25 to 35yearold project that continued to “perform its original
function with perfection” and possessed “an enduring design
excellence.”
And now, even though it is less than four decades old, it is the focus
of a concerted preservation effort — a campaign some at Yale hope
will inspire stewards of other recent museums and buildings.
The center houses an extensive collection of British painting, sculpture, rare books and
manuscripts donated by Paul Mellon, a Yale alumnus. With an exterior of matte stainless
steel and reflective glass, its geometric, fourstory interior contains two courtyards and
features natural materials like travertine marble, white oak and linen. Meant to resemble
domestic spaces, galleries are lighted by a system created by the pioneering lighting
designer Richard Kelly, including skylights that light the top, fourthfloor galleries.
The center and Yale University Press last year published an elaborately illustrated, 200
page, hardbound book detailing the conservation plan. In it, Amy Meyers, the current
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12/5/12 Yale Moves to Preserve Center for British Art - NYTimes.com
2/4www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/arts/artsspecial/yale-moves-to-preserve-center-for-british-art.html?pag…
director of the center, said she was motivated to create the plan after her arrival in 2002,
when two elevator control panels needed replacement. That, she said, “led us to realize
how quickly even minor, wellmeaning but misconceived design and maintenance
decisions might cause an architecturally significant building to drift from its original form
in unsatisfactory ways.”
To assess any drift that might already have occurred and to guide future decisions, Ms.
Meyers established a building conservation committee and hired the British firm of Peter
Inskip & Peter Jenkins Architects, which has restored the architect Sir John Soane’s turn
ofthe19thcentury Moggerhanger Park in Bedfordshire, England, and advised on the
conservation of the Art Deco Battersea Power Station in London.
Mr. Inskip and his colleague, Stephen Gee, wrote the conservation plan with Constance
Clement, the center’s deputy director, using archival materials from Yale and the
University of Pennsylvania to trace the evolution of the Kahn building. The plan also
examines the building’s design, construction and renovations; identifies features that
characterize its cultural significance, ranking them with a star system; analyzes its
materials; and contains a series of 142 policies, ranging from “respect the roof as a
designed element of the building” to “strive for lighting systems that provide flexibility to
respond to changing exhibition requirements.”
The first step in the conservation plan was restoration of the center’s sunken exterior
courtyard, begun in 2009. On tap for next year is refurbishment of one department
devoted to prints and drawings, and of another for rare books and manuscripts. Cabinets,
paneling and furniture will be refinished; carpet and linen on walls will be replaced; and
insulation to decrease condensation will be installed. In 2015, the center’s second, third
and fourth floor galleries will be totally refurbished, with new carpet, linen and display
panels, refinished white oak trim and upgraded lighting.
When asked the cost of these projects, Ms. Meyers said only that Yale would spend a
“significant amount of money” on them.
She said the center’s plan could serve as a prototype for other buildings, old and new. If
such plans are commissioned as buildings are being built, they could “inform stewardship
from when they were born,” she said. “It gets harder and harder to go back.”
The conservation plan has been sent to stewards of other Kahn buildings, including the
Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego
and the library at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H.; and to members of the
Association of Art Museum Directors.
Carolyn Kiernat, a principal at Page & Turnbull, a San Francisco architecture firm that
specializes in the preservation of historic structures, said a conservation plan was similar
to a historic structure report for an older landmark. But such measures are not yet
common for modern buildings. Among the first modern conservation plans was one
created in the 1990s for the 1973 Sydney Opera House by James Semple Kerr, an
Australian architect. “People don’t commonly think to do a historic structure report for a
modern building because people don’t think of modern buildings as historic, but it’s
crucial,” said Frank E. Sanchis III, program director for the United States for the World
Monuments Fund. “We need to better understand the nature of modern materials, so we
can protect and preserve them responsibly.”
Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum, which will be joined next year by a free
standing pavilion designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, praised the Yale
Center for drawing up a conservation plan “at a time when there were no pressing needs,
like replacing the roof or windows. They were able to really sit back and carefully consider
every aspect of the building.” He also said he might consider creating a similar document
for his museum.
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12/5/12 Yale Moves to Preserve Center for British Art - NYTimes.com
3/4www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/arts/artsspecial/yale-moves-to-preserve-center-for-british-art.html?pag…
A version of this article appeared in print on October 28, 2012, on page F12 of the New York edition with the headline: Carefor Young Buildings.
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Estevan RaelGalvez, vice president for historic sites for the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, said the conservation plan might be an example “for museums across the
country, including house museums” like the trust’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill., from
1951 by Mies van der Rohe, and Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., from 1949 by Philip
Johnson.
Mirko Zardini, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, suggested it
might be easier for museums to adopt the conservation plan concept than other building
stewards, because “the mentality of conservation” is part of museums’ culture.
Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, cautioned that a potential
problem was conflict among architects and museum directors and curators over the
building itself as a work of art. “Not every museum building is a work of art, and not every
curator is the best judge of what’s good for a building,” he said.
Lack of funds could also be a factor, said John Wilson, director of the Timken Museum of
Art in San Diego, whose 1965 building also features lighting by Kelly, the noted lighting
designer.
Renovation of a museum’s historic building “depends on resources, how much money you
have. Money drives so much of what we do, especially for impoverished regional
institutions such as ours,” Mr. Wilson said.
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