Frank Zappa (allegedly) said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture“.
Exhibiting architecture can be a tricky business as well — and, in my opinion, the best way to do that is by allowing people to actually visit buildings (that’s why I love things like Doors Open Days), as simple as that. Most often than not, though, that’s not how things work.
Last Saturday I visited a 4th century Roman villa archaeologists unearthed from under Palazzo Valentini (that’s where Rome’s Provincial Administration offices are). Yet another Roman villa, I’ve seen plenty of them — still the way they present this one to visitors is very interesting: people walk on a glass flooring built a couple of metres above the villa, almost floating over the ruins of the building. The lighting is just perfect, focusing each time on the spots that are being explained by the voiceover. There are light games that help visually reconstructing bits that have been destroyed without actually physically invading the architecture: that’s preserving and explaining architecture at the same time. Very clever indeed.
Unfortunately, taking pictures is not permitted, and I would’ve loved to take some, especially of the beautiful mosaic and marble floorings. Still, I’d recommend a visit (the site is open until 6th January 2010, then will be closed again as they’re continuing working on it), as the virtual reconstruction I was talking about before is very well done by Piero Angela and Paco Lanciano, who’ve been working together for years, now, divulgating quality culture on Italian TV (yes, that’s rare stuff but it still happens every now and then, thank heavens.).
This is an example of how exhibiting architecture should be done.
On the same day I then went to Musei Capitolini to visit the “Michelangelo architetto a Roma” exhibition.
Bad move, huge mistake. If you’re planning to go there, just don’t do it, it’s very disappointing, mark my words: they advertise the exhibit claiming there also are models (plural, mind you) of some of Michelangelo’s designs, the truth is there is only one (singular) section-model of St. Peter’s cupola:
and that’s all on models front.
Drawings by Michelangelo are only a small part of the exhibited collection, which is mostly engravings of his buildings by other artists. The drawings are bad placed and bad lit, to view them I had to shade them with my hands as lights reflection on the glass was really annoying. As for the Roman villa, no snapping allowed here, too — but since museum’s staff just lazily loafed around in the lobby typing text messages into their mobile phones not really paying attention to what visitors were doing, I took pictures anyway, just ‘cos.
But truth is that you don’t need to visit the exhibition, as the info and the few pics on the free leaflet are enough and actually cover pretty much all the good stuff that’s in there.
That’s not an architecture exhibition, that’s just a lame way to rob people of the ticket’s price.
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