GLAMOROUS GLAMS: 6 STUNNING GLAM BUILDINGS

GLAM Guide | Evelyn Feldman

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For my final Musings post, I wanted to celebrate the beauty of some GLAM spaces. Whether big or small, modernist, classical, or brutalist, GLAM buildings often have stunning designs.

In these stressful final weeks of the semester (if you are a student), I hope this post can give you a thoughtful break through the appreciation of some extraordinary, glamorous GLAMs.

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum 

This museum in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, looks kind of like a UFO. It finished construction in 1996 and was designed by Oscar Niemeyer.

The beginnings of its construction were connected to political scandal.

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Brazil. Source (top). Source (bottom).

National Archives building of the BAnQ

The BAnQ (Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec) has several facilities throughout Quebec, and was created in a merging of Quebec's national archives and national library in 2006, making it an example of GLAM convergence.

While the Grande Bibliothèque in Downtown Montreal is pretty stunning too, I decided to show off the somewhat lesser-known national archives, which are located in the Gilles Hocquart Building in Montreal.

The interior design was done in part by the Provencher agency, who also designed the beautiful First Collector Sewer and Québécor Pavilion renovation in Montreal's Point-à-Callière Museum.

National Archives of the BAnQ, Montreal, Quebec. Source (top). Source (bottom left). Source (bottom right).

Anne of Green Gables Museum

Maybe you're not a glam kind of person, and cozy is more your style. Then the Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush, in Kensington, Prince Edward Island, might be the museum for you!

The building housing this museum was used as the setting for Lucy Maud Montgomery's novels Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat.

Not to be confused with Green Gables House, another related heritage site.

The Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush in Kensington, Prince Edward Island. Source.

The Guggenheim 

Okay, this one is a classic, but also a personal favourite. Isn't there something kind of glamorous about that swirling white gallery wall? 

Whether or not you're a fan of the white gallery wall, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York is certainly extraordinary. Completed in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright design recalls a nautilus shell, with a continuous ramp spiralling towards the ceiling.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Source (top). Source (bottom).

Calgary Central Library

Lastly I have to squeeze in a couple of libraries! First is Calgary's new Central Library, which just opened in November 2018 and is all the talk of library land.

A section of the Calgary CTrain, a light rail transit system, runs right through the middle of the building. You can watch a time lapse of the library's construction here.

The New Central Library in Calgary. Source (top left). Source (top right). Source (bottom).

The Toronto Reference Library

Let's finish close to home, with the Toronto Reference Library. While it may look a bit like a boring brick on the outside, the Toronto Reference Library's interior is stunning.

Maybe you've already heard of this one, but did you know that the Reference Library features in The Weeknd's music video for Secrets? Or that its floors used to be lined with hanging plants, evoking imagery of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

The Toronto Reference Library. Source (top). Source (bottom).

Really, there were hundreds--thousands--of GLAMs I could have chosen for this post. Some runner-ups include the Biblioteca Sandro Penna in Perugia, Italy (another UFO!), the Tama Art University Library in Tokyo, Japan, the Erawan Museum in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand (the museum is inside a three-headed elephant), and the Vennesla Library and Culture House in Vennesla, Norway (isn't culture house a neat term for a library?)

I hope this list of glamorous GLAM buildings has given you a break from the stressful final weeks of your semester--or any other pressures of your day.

MUSEUMS AS SITES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

MUSINGS ABROAD

BY: KRISTEN MCLAUGHLIN

Over the last six months or so of me writing the Musings Abroad column, I often think about how the museums I write about work together on an international level. In an increasingly globalized world, what do museums do, both actively and passively, to change, develop, enhance or decrease relationships between different countries, their governments, and their heritage/art institutions?

A Japanese McDonald's sign from 1975 from the National Museum of American History. Source.

What do I mean by international relations between museums? 

Museums are not the neutral and objective spaces many people have liked to believe over the past half a century; museums are political and contribute to social change on a local and wider scale. Museums have the ability to become symbols of cities or nations. Museums contribute to international relations by exhibiting collections from different nations and loaning objects across borders. Museum professionals are working more and more abroad, training in one country and working in another, bringing different policies and methods to different countries. Some museums work directly with different governments to ensure artifacts or remains are repatriated or exhibited, such as museums around the globe working with the Haida in repatriating their ancestral remains with communities and the Canadian/BC government.

Should Museums Care About International Relations?

So far I have made it sound as if international relations are secondary to a museum's purpose as a heritage preservation institution. Rather, I believe international relations are integral to those museums that have international collections. In a world that is becoming more and more globalized, our museums can no longer isolate themselves from their sister institutions across the world. By being proactive in building relationships abroad, museums can be at the forefront of active engagement and participation in issues wider than themselves.

Examples

International Entities - ICOM and UNESCO

ICOM, or the International Council of Museums, is a network of over 37,000 members who are a part of the global museum community. They are a leading entity in museum ethics. There is a specific ICOM Canada website for Canadian entities or individuals interested.

UNESCO or United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, is perhaps one of the more well-known global heritage entities, focused on heritage protection on both a tangible and intangible scale and on world heritage sites. Recently they've been working with museums in war-torn areas to attempt to provide protection and planning for collections.

Individual Museums - The Art Gallery of Ontario

Last month I attended the Ontario Museum Association (OMA) conference, where I sat in on the talk "Ontario Museums and Cultural Diplomacy". An interesting case study was the exhibition Small Wonders, on the Boxwood Miniatures exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I had seen the exhibit myself and was completely blown away by some of the work they had done in breaking down the layers of these objects and comparing them to worldwide collections. At the conference, Dr. Alexandra Suda from the AGO talked about how it was truly an international collaboration between different museums, not only in researching different collections for their exhibition but in sending the exhibition to two other museums: The Met Cloisters in the USA and The Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. This demonstrated all the work that goes on behind-the-scenes of an exhibition.

Sample object from the exhibit Small Wonders at the AGO. Source.

Individual Museums - The British Museum

One example stands out as to how cultural exchange can greatly affect political relationships, both negatively and positively. The exhibit in 2005-2006 Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia, was a global exhibition put on by the British Museum that was planned to travel worldwide as well. Some of the objects in the exhibit were loaned by two Iranian museums, the National Museum in Tehran and the Persepolis Museum. This exhibition occurred during a time of strained political relations with Iran because of its increased nuclear armament. The British Museum had agreed to loan the Cyrus Cylinder in return for their loans; however, with increased political tensions the British Museum released statements declaring they would wait to make sure they were loaning the object into a safe environment. This caused great strife with the Iranian government, which threatened to sever all cultural relations and accusing the Director of wasting time and making excuses.

When the cylinder was finally loaned in 2010, it provided a chance for other discussions to slowly start up again. This entire situation is demonstrative of the fact that museums and other cultural institution do in fact have great political power.

The Cyrus Cylinder. Source.

The Future

I am interested in seeing what the future of international relationships are through museums. We are well aware of presidents and prime ministers traveling the globe on trade missions, discussing topics such as job creation, trade deals, and resources. These talks frequently take place in a cultural context; being shown different dances, cultural practices, important locations, and more. Despite this, the topics of cultural exchange do not seem to make the headlines.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau write messages on traditional Ema wooden plaques at Tokyo's Meiji Jingsu Shrine, one example of many that incorporates a country's cultural values into political visits. Source.

Perhaps this is because the work is being done in the background by different cultural institutions within these nations: partnerships are made, exchanges happen, and citizens from different countries learn about others around the globe by visiting. Is it up to our individual museums and art galleries to create those transnational relationships? Are museums meant to be global or local? Can they be both? These are the questions I want to leave you with as you visit your next museum. Think about the exhibits. Who have they worked in partnership with? Are objects from the local area or from abroad? Where do their staff, visiting interns, and visitors come from? Should museums be doing more or less to contribute to international relations?