#architectutre

Munich Residenz, Germany,

FLOORED

The Yale Center for British Art, one of architect Louis I. Kahn's final and most iconic works, reopened in the spring after a two-year project to replace its original 1977 skylights, roofing, and lighting. It feels, inside and out, just the same. It remains a quiet structure with astounding effects. From Chapel Street its facade of dim metal and raw concrete is mute. Then, as one steps into the vestibule, the atrium, the stairwell, and onto each floor, broad, still spaces open.

The flash opening exhibit, new work by Tracey Emin, showcases monumental nude self-portraits. The big broken brushtrokes and blood-red color spills are a perfect foil to the architecture. Walking through, the building's fine, unfussy details shine through: the raised seams between concrete pours, the diagonal joints in ceiling beams, the high wood wall base, the folded edges of metal panels. A survey from the museum's collection on the top floor (which includes small, great paintings by John Constable, Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon) is more substantial, but the building remains the main attraction. White light spills through shaded skylights and the galleries, set out in a nearly platonic grid, pull one through mesmerically.

At the J. M. W. Turner exhibit on the third floor, however, the paintings take hold. There are some of the artist's earliest works here, skillful traditional landscapes. There are later works, less tethered to the scene, shaking off the rigor of optics. (Is this a cliff standing at the edge of the water, or a smear of oil color? Is this a stroke of watercolor pigment or the mast of a small boat?) In these drawings and paintings human figures -- typically tiny -- often spoil the effect, fixing the representation.

Then there are late works, completed after 1840, whose painted surfaces are lyrically opaque. In one watercolor the faintest fields of color soaked into paper, with barely the trace of a hand, make a harbour scene. The final painting on display, Squally Weather, is a stunner, that asserts itself as both abstraction and representation, boldly, at once. It's a transcendent moment -- seeing a world emerge from strata of paint only to dissolve like smoke back into it -- and one's heart falls to the floor.

What kind of architecture makes the best museum? A great artwork renders this question irrelevant. In front of it one's self, one's body, and the museum itself simply disappear.