Opened in 1985, the Arthur Sackler Museum is part of the Harvard Art Museums, together with the Fogg Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum.
The museum, designed by British architect James Stirling – well known internationally for its postmodern works – is well placed in the context of Boston, and except for the two cylindrical elements which decorate and frame the entrance, it seems to be a normal building.
Instead, the interior – especially the entrance hall – is distinguished by the bright colors and the volumes games.
“James Stirling has dealt in a very high kind of order and organisation in the design of the [Arthur Sackler Museum]: this is a dense, tight plan on a small restricted site that brilliantly solves administrative and gallery needs. The building is remarkable for the creative virtuosity with which its functions are accommodated while suggesting a monumentality that belies actual dimensions. Stirling was lucky to have as a client the director of the Fogg [Museum], Seymour Slive, who understood this achievement immediately. Professors John Coolidge and Neil Levine…complete a formidable triumvirate of sympathetic experts.” Ada Louise Huxtable, “A Style Chrstallised”
Arthur Sackler Museum photographs selection
One Response
I can’t blame this review for not understanding this building. You have to look a bit more patiently and remember some history to realize that James Stirling had pulled a fast one. He designed a museum that embeds nothing but native American elements at every turn.
The two vent shafts are obvious totem poles, the glass entry vestibule, repeated at the top of the stairs is a direct lift of many Aztec ceremonial gates to formal compounds, the stair, with its breaks and side galleries was an abstraction of those found in Central American ziggurat, abstracted more masterfully than any cubist artist could imagine.
The exterior banding and irregular window placement recall the vertical fact of the multiple plinths in a ziggurat. For example, see : https://pxhere.com/en/photo/921650
I will be happy to provide a side by side comparison of James Stirling’s own sketches and the items I have listed. You can find many example of totem poles and entry spaces on the web. I can guarantee that you will not see this building the same way after a bit of research.
Alas, under the nose of professional teachers and designers working a block away at the GSD, this gem is now a warehouse and secondary classrooms.