UCLA SHOWS PLANS FOR MUSEUM

UCLA unveiled plans Sunday for a major museum to house an expanded collection of ethnic artifacts.

To be known as the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the facility will be situated on the Westwood campus and is expected to cost an estimated $12 million to construct.

The museum will feature the university’s current 170,000-item collection, representing in particular the contemporary, historic and pre-historic cultures of Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas.

Though the collection is considered by art experts to be one of the more outstanding in the world, it has been housed to date in the basement of modest Haines Hall at UCLA. Because of lack of space, major showings have had to be mounted elsewhere.

Also to be included in the new facility will be select pieces from the silver collection that had been housed in the Fowler Museum in Beverly Hills, which closed earlier this year. Presumably, these will be cultural artifacts of a sort.

Various items from that museum were auctioned off in February to raise funds for the new facility, which subsequently was named for the late Francis E. Fowler Jr. and his sons, Francis III and Philip. Contributions also came from the Fowler Foundation.

The Fowler will be constructed on a steep slope just west and below historic Royce Hall and bordered by the Janss Steps to the south, Parking Structure 5 to the north and the Dance Building to the west.

Though three stories in height, the facility has been designed to take advantage of the slope and not to block the views from the recently constructed Royce Hall terrace. It will total 95,000 square feet, almost the same size as the Museum of Contemporary Art nearing completion downtown.

However, unlike the Contemporary and various other museums that have been rising in cities and on campuses across the country, the architectural style of the Fowler is apparently purposely dated. It was designed by architect Arnold Savrann, in association with the firm of John Carl Warnecke & Associates. David Murdock and the Murdock Development Corp. also contributed design, administrative and construction management services.

According to plans already approved by UC Regents, the style will be Northern Italian Romanesque, described by UCLA as “collegiate Romanesque,” with its red brick, beige stone, rich detailing and an arcaded galleria attempting to echo the style of Royce Hall and other original campus structures built nearly 60 years ago.

The answer to the question of whether the style of Fowler will mirror or mimic Royce--and whether its generous interior design of galleries and administrative and storage spaces will serve the collection, its viewers and scholars--will have to await the opening of the new structure. Construction is scheduled to begin this fall and be completed by the end of 1986. Two-dimensional plans, elevations and renderings do have a way at times of distorting intentions.

Whatever the outcome, however, it is apparent from the plans that UCLA will not be taking advantage of a rare opportunity to create a distinctive facility for a distinctive collection.

Instead of expressing the function of the museum or simply calling attention to it, the plans indicate that the designers and UCLA seem to be content to just decorate the facility in a sort of Romanesque cloak. It looks as if Fowler will not be a neighbor of Royce, but rather its son, cut from the same piece of cloth.

However, considering UCLA’s failed attempts over the last few decades to commission any modern structures of distinction and incorporate them into its venerable campus, retreating behind a Romanesque facade perhaps makes sense.

And if it doesn’t, there is always the generous and attractive landscaping that has distinguished the UCLA campus to hide yet another architectural mistake.