Building
The museum's current building, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, was completed in 1993. The stainless steel skin was fabricated and installed by the A. Zahner Company, a frequent collaborator with Gehry's office.
It is one of the major landmarks on campus, situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River at the east end of the Washington Avenue Bridge. The building presents two faces, depending on which side it is viewed from. From the campus side, it presents a brick facade that blends with the existing brick and sandstone buildings. On the opposite side, the museum is a playground of curving and angular brushed steel sheets. This side is an abstraction of a waterfall and a fish.
The most stunning views of the building are from the pedestrian and highway decks of the adjacent Washington Avenue Bridge. Some locals critical of the radical architectural style frequently point out that the building's design could unexpectedly reflect the light of the sun into the eyes of motorists on the bridge. Studies commissioned by MNDOT have found that the museum is not hazardous to motorists.
Read more about this topic: Weisman Art Museum
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)