Brad Cloepfil returns to the Contemporary
Portland, Oregon-based architect Brad Cloepfil is no stranger to St. Louis. His design for the Contemporary Art Museum was his first major project outside the Pacific Northwest. Now, he’s coming back to talk about his work.
Since the Contemporary opened five years ago, Cloepfil’s firm Allied Works Architecture has made its mark in contemporary museum design. The controversial redesign of Edward Durell Stone’s Gallery of Modern Art for the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City, the expansion of the Seattle Art Museum, the new University of Michigan Museum of Art and the future Clyfford Still Museum in Denver are among Cloepfil’s recent projects.
The free lecture takes place in Steinberg Auditorium, Sam Fox School, Washington University. Monday at 6:30 p.m. It will be preceded by a reception at 6. This could be your opportunity to let the architecture starlet hear what you think of his local museum.
The outside is alright, I just wish they’d fill the inside with actual art instead of stuff that people found lying around at construction sites.
How true. I know we’re somewhat spoiled by the free museums in St. Louis, including SLAM and Kemper, but that place feels like a ripoff. It’s a huge, uninviting, concrete box. It looks large on the outside but it’s basically one series of small rooms, smaller in exhibit space than Kemper would be my guess. I was left wondering…how do I get to the *rest* of it. The guards also follow you around and stare at you no matter what you’re doing. Like what am I going to do, bend the rusty nail in that 2×4 piece of “art”?
They should have used all that concrete to build a children’s playground or perhaps to patch some potholes. It would have been put to better use that way. The Contemporary has a LONG way to go before they are on par with similar institutions around the country. Their leadership and management are amateurish on their best day and their choices for exhibitions are very lacking. I agree with Chad, the guards are menacing and make visiting the museum very unpleasant. If you’ve never been, don’t bother.