THOUGH it resides in a prime example of traditional museum architecture — a Beaux-Arts building designed in 1893 by McKim, Mead & White — there is little stale or stodgy about the Brooklyn Museum.
For more than a century the museum has been one of the country’s most important cultural institutions, and for more than a decade it has also courted controversy.
In 1999 the museum created a maelstrom by exhibiting a painting that depicted the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung, prompting the mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to threaten to cut city financing. In 2002 it hosted an exhibition featuring props, models, costumes and characters from the “Star Wars” films that struck some reviewers as particularly lowbrow. And five years ago it added an unapologetically brash, modern glass entrance to the Old World exterior of its building.
Apart from the discussion over its mission and future, the museum, which operates on a $28 million budget, has had many successes in recent years, from educating school children, to mounting critically acclaimed shows and introducing countless visitors to paintings by Gilbert Stuart, landscapes by Bierstadt, the mummy of Demetrios and other works in its permanent collection.
Many of the experts who agreed to assess the museum’s efforts were effusive in their support for the institution, whose innovations they embraced. Others suggested changes in its approach.
Read the whole story at The New York Times, by Robin Pogrebin
Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times
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