Denise Scott Brown In Other Eyes: Portraits of an Architect, edited by Frida Grahn. Birkhäuser, 256 pages.
The ugly debate over the future of the Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates-designed Sainsbury Wing of London’s National Gallery gives me a strong sense of deja vu. It was just a few years ago, in 2018, that I argued in two essays and a widely circulated petition that a plan to expand the firm’s Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla be redesigned with a greater appreciation for and sensitivity to Venturi and Scott Brown’s work. But in the ensuing controversy—as in the controversy over the Sainsbury Wing—this point has been lost in a sea of caricatures. The question taken up in the media and on Twitter has instead become whether a museum has the right to evolve with the times (of course it does), or whether it must instead be preserved in aspic on account of the fame of its architects (of course it should not be). This shift in terms has done a disservice to all involved. After all, rigid preservationism has never characterized the work of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, and it is not what drives Scott Brown’s concerns over the future of her work in London.
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