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I contemplated architectural examples
ranging from a 12th Century sandstone castle museum on a mountain in rural Germany to the massive ultra-modern Getty
Museum on its hilltop perch in Los Angeles, California. Some of my
selections document museums specifically built to house specific items ... but
others are visually striking buildings converted into museums from different original purposes. A German fortress becomes a castle museum; a Paris train station a site
for Impressionist Art; a post office becomes home to SBMA; and a military pension center built after the Civil War becomes
the National Building
Museum in DC.
Some paintings were done large, others small. Sometimes a huge structure like I.M. Pei's East
Building at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. condenses and amplifies
its visual power by being almost small enough to hold in the palm of a hand.
I have been asked if I had
any architectural training. No, I did not.
But one of my ancestral German grandfathers was Lorenz Lechler, a palace architect for two successive Heidelberg
dukes at the end of the 15th century (for about 25 years). He published a book
with his architectural designs in the early 16th century. I try conscientiously
not to embarrass his memory whenever I paint architectural subjects.
| "Medieval Masonry" |
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| click to view images of Berwarstein Castle, Germany |
| "Overhead At L.A.C.M.A." |
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| click to view images of LACMA and Santa Barbara Museum of Art |
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