2023-05-10 07:30:11
Is it the famous Antelope Canyon in Arizona, with its limestone curves carved by the winds? An ice cave sculpted by the waters in Iceland? The stone arches of Utah? Or a giant beehive, made of honeycomb? Upon entering the new wing of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, on the border of Central Park, visitors plunge into the inner, subterranean world of Chicago architect Jeanne Gang. Immediately, they will recognize the talent of Gang, 59, who is known for the undulating facades of her skyscrapers, such as the Aqua Tower, on the shores of Lake Michigan. This project’s special feature is that “the path begins from the inside,” Gang told us. This technical constraint is fitting, given the wing’s theme – the life of insects – and its underground structure, built like a beehive or an anthill. And it is a technical constraint, because the new wing had to be built, or perhaps embedded, between the unfinished main building, which was built at the end of the 19th century in a Victorian Gothic style, and the more modern entrance, which leads to the planetarium. And, above all, it had to straddle the underground warehouses. Instead of building from scratch, the existing structure had to be reused, said Gang, which is fundamentally easier.
Arches and cells of reinforced concrete, with a raw look and shapes reminiscent of Antoni Gaudi, allowed Gang to fill this void with the museum’s Richard Gilder Center, named following its patron, a philanthropic financier who died in 2020. The $465 million project, launched in 2014, seemed at times interminable and was subject to multiple protests by locals: Construction did not actually begin until 2019, the year that the inauguration was supposed to have taken place (and the institution’s 150th anniversary). On May 4, the wing finally opened to the public.
The Richard Gilder Center is also intended to serve as an entrance and to facilitate circulation in the museum, a labyrinth of dead ends where visitors tend to get lost. The American Museum of Natural History, which is very popular with tourists, experienced a boost in its celebrity with the 2006 release of Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museuma movie in which all the exhibits – animals, dinosaurs and miniatures – come to life, and the hero, a night watchman, manages to restore order with the help of Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), an adventurous former president of the United States and an icon of the museum.
Unfortunately, time has passed. Roosevelt is no longer in favor, and the museum has aged. In front of its main entrance, there used to be a statue of “Teddy” on horseback, dressed as a cowboy, accompanied by an African American and a Native American on foot. In January 2022, the statue, which is overtly racist – even if the New York Times found nothing wrong with it when it was unveiled in 1940 – was shipped to North Dakota, where Roosevelt was a rancher and where it might be kept out of sight while waiting to be displayed in a future library dedicated to the former president. “As a symbol, it was increasingly problematic for our visitors and staff. It wasn’t Teddy, it was the composition of the statue,” said Ellen Futter, who ran the museum for 30 years before retiring in March.
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