Being Exhibitionist
The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco
Last month I stepped straight into a Claude painting; or at least that's what it felt like entering the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. This spectacular building is the ultimate example of romanticised neo-classicism with pseudo-ruined colonnades stretching either side of a central, domed building. Set on a lake, only one block from the water front overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge it is an enviable setting for group photographs. Indeed I saw three different wedding parties taking advantage during my hour there. It is beautiful in it's very extravagance.
Now home to the Exploratorium, which seems to be a grown-up version of the Launch Pad, this Palace was built in 1915 as one of the central buildings of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, and soon entered the hearts of the city's inhabitants. It was re-built in 1965 and renovated only 3 years ago. It was designed, essentially, as the stage set which it resembles, and which link it to Claude's panoramas. Intended only to last for the period of the Exposition, its structure is almost papier mâché on a wooden frame, and had to be lovingly reconstructed in 1965.
Reading this history on the excellent interpretation panels around the lake (in between taking a myriad of photos), got me thinking about grand exhibitions. What makes some of these events so successful and others such failures? I have often thought that, if I could time travel, my first port of call would be Britain's own Great Exhibition of 1851, in which the world was displayed in one crystal building, in a manner which early-modern collectors would have envied intensely. Yet, I never visited our millennium attempt to resurrect this idea in the Dome. This structure has now become a successful music venue but it is hardly a London icon. Is it historical nostalgia which makes these spaces survive and evolve? Both San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts and London's Crystal Palace, in their own ways, hark back to both an aesthetic and economic golden age. Is this something which the Dome will ever achieve?