Hood Museum Renovation Causes a Split

The Hood Museum entrance, whether by Charles Moore or Tsien & Williams, remains infill between and behind other buildings on the Green. The latter's proposed entrance of glaring light brick, punctuated by a Marcel Breuer rip-off peekaboo window, betrays the Hood's desperation to be noticed and attract visitors.

Sometimes it really is best to start over, and this is an example. Dartmouth should resist another alley accretion and instead get rid of the tacky 1962 Hopkins Center, replacing it with buildings (or a least facades) worthy of an Ivy League art museum and performing arts center.

These facades have a unique

The writer's comparison to the Folk Art Museum controversy would be appropriate if that discussion had been about MoMA selectively altering portions of the Folk Art building to integrate it into a new design that balanced the needs of the MoMA with the recognition of the Folk Art Museum's architectural importance. As we now know, it did not happen that way.

The renovation and addition of the Hood appears to maintain components of Moore's design while recognizing that many thirty(?) year old buildings need to be re-thought, updated, and re-considered to reflect new needs. Let's move away from tenuous, dramatic comparisons and more towards a deeper understanding of the issues.

None of the illustrations shows anything of much worth in any of the buildings. A lot of museums are tacked on and added to but very view are really much to look at as buildings, the best of them often once private homes like the Frick which gives you a sense of period and makes the works look very good and welcoming to a visitor, not making the big look at me noise that so many seek as a mark of excellence. The Met is a pompous mess and the Guggenheim on Fifth is a not very good place for most art to go on show. That Marcel Breur brutaliist thing is an artifact of am architecture full of high elitist theory signifying nothing that merits permanence. Show me Moore's best and make your case for it but the Dartmouth expansion is just money seeking an excuse to be spent. What's with the art it is supposed to display? no one seem to be discussing this core of why the buildings even exist.
Even the best architect can come up with lemons, and they know it.

As a Dartmouth student, I could not be more excited about the Hood renovation. The current space is cramped, awkward and hard to access. The new entry facing the Green will integrate the museum into this larger focal point of campus activity, rather than keeping it hidden behind an unused courtyard. Hopefully, the renovation will re-vitalize the Hood -- presently an under-appreciated resource at Dartmouth.

I am the director of the Charles Moore Foundation in Austin. When I first heard that Williams Tsien were appointed as architects of this expansion, I was excited, as I have great respect for their work. I absolutely believe it is unreasonable for buildings to be left unchanged forever; as society changes, architecture must serve institutions as they grow and change. The important question remains, "how well are these changes made?" Sadly, in this, case, far more is being undermined than the rendering suggests. (I have seen a comprehensive set of drawings.) Not only is the "gateway" (which is really a substantial part of the building, not a mere opening), being destroyed, but then an entire section of the building south of this is being completely swallowed by the Williams Tsien block. Then, the major diagonal gallery and staircase are being covered over. Finally, the courtyard is being entirely occupied, reduced to a narrow alley. Architecture is as much about a building as they spaces among them, so to suggest that this is "glazing" over the courtyard to create an concourse is also a profound mis-characterization.

And for the current Hood director to compare this intervention to Bernini's work at St. Peter's is patently absurd.

I honestly maintain that creative, inventive, and even bold additions to buildings can improve them. Layers make places interesting. Regretfully, this heavy-handed scheme diminishes rather than magnifies.

There is so little balance to this article. The Hood Museum is bound on all sides and has no where else to expand. How about showing a site plan? It would be great to keep an original vision intact, but how do you account for the changing needs of an institution? The references to the Folk Art Museum just seem like cheap shots to create drama.

I wish the Times' editorial staff would make a better effort to illustrate the argument. The images provided drive one's interpretation and in this case a sense of how that entry works and doesn't driven by these would be helpful. I see now these two are of a similar view, perhaps one of those sliding graphics of before/after within the same frame could help. Together with today's severely thin rendering of the Apple and Google campuses as hippie utopias via a slideshow lookbook of sorts suggests surface clickbait is holding sway over thoughtful content. I hope I'm wrong.
It's unfortunate TWBTA's rendering of the existing fabric betrays an insensitivity to color, texture, and specificity which they seemed to hold dear with the Folk Art facade, and for that matter isn't the criticism of their solution, which is seemingly sidetracked into simply a preservationist argument, slightly warranted with this weak entry? I wish the reporter had more of a take on this and less of a "the news is there's this argument over there" angle.
One hopes the Cyclops solution to a flat facade is on its last legs with this, after the Broad's navel, or that those two weak examples might spur a more critical reexamination of Breuer's. They might spend equal time thinking about that glass, its clunky frame, and the gesture, as rendering the phantom tree on its surface.

The ironic narrative seems premature. How do we know this isn't a compromise to save the existing structure? What value will the new building have (architecturally and program wise) vs. keeping a view or garden? Seems like there is little substance in this conversation.

Another big question is why Dartmouth hasn't been more forthcoming with reasons for the sudden, unexplained departure of Michael Taylor, who hired Mr. Williams and Ms. Tsien.