Pulitzer Prizes ‘Un-Museum’

There is art on the walls, great art, by Picasso and Monet, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Rothko and Georges Braque. But this is not a typical museum.

In fact, the new Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts shuns the very term. Director Laurie Stein calls it an “un-museum.”

“A contrarian experiment,” suggested Jay Rounds, director of the museum studies program at the University of Missouri in St. Louis.

There are, for example, no labels on the art. And the works are not arranged in any logical order: A gaudy Warhol portrait of Elizabeth Taylor is just a few feet from an enormous pastel of water lilies by Monet.

There are no postcards for sale. There is no gift shop. Also, no restaurant, no vending machines, no audio guides for rent. There are no diaper-changing stations in the bathrooms. No ashtrays on the balcony. There is an elevator, because disability-rights activists fought for it. But other amenities are scarce.

The floors are bare concrete, striped with metal grates. And the only places to sit in the galleries are sculptural pieces of art: two metal mesh chairs designed by Shiro Kuramata and an oak slab bench by the building’s much-honored architect, Tadao Ando.

Throw in the stark exterior of the building--it looks like an impenetrable concrete box--and it’s clear this is a museum like no other.

Which is precisely the point.

Founder Emily Rauh Pulitzer originally planned to build a private gallery to hold the modern and contemporary art collected by her late husband, newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Although her homes are crammed with extraordinary works--museum pieces in the bathroom and on the porch--she never has had enough room to display them all. “There were pieces that I very much wanted to see that had been in storage,” she explained.

As she worked with the architect to design space for these works, Pulitzer’s vision expanded: She decided she would open her private collection for public viewing.

But not in a typical museum setting. She did not want crowds. She did not want jostling. She did not want visitors to spend all their time reading explanatory text. Above all, she did not want the regimentation that so many blockbuster museum shows impose, did not want people to feel herded from gallery to gallery to gift shop.

Instead, Pulitzer wanted to create a place for quiet contemplation, a place where visitors could take their time exploring art and architecture, without distraction. “A place of possibility,” Ando calls it.

“This is a radically alternative way of thinking about things,” Rounds said. “At the Pulitzer Foundation, they’re not ashamed to say an art museum is not a shopping mall. . . . They argue that a museum ought to offer a sense of separation from everyday life, a passage into a different time and place. And they deliver on that premise.”

But that passage into a different place has a narrow entrance.

The foundation’s galleries are open to the public just 11 hours a week, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Admission, which is free, is by reservation only. Original plans called for a maximum of 50 visitors at a time to keep down noise. But the staff now says it will let in many more people--up to 1,200 at once.

During the off-hours, the galleries will be used as a sort of cultural think tank, designed to attract artists, architects, urban planners and students from around the world.

There are plans for musicians from the St. Louis Symphony to perform pieces at various sites in the museum--each one followed by a lecture on the relationship between art and music. A local dance group hopes to stage a performance in the galleries with choreography inspired by the art. And everyone from fourth-graders to world-renowned curators will be invited to experiment with different ways to display the collection.

“We want to be a place where discussion and ideas can be generated,” Stein said. “One of the things we don’t want to do is be focused simply on art.”

Despite the emphasis on community engagement, much about the foundation’s operations remains obscure.

Documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that Emily Pulitzer donated $12.5 million to the foundation in 1999 and $5 million more last year--not including her artwork, which is on loan. Stein says the nonprofit foundation also has applied for some grants. But neither she nor Pulitzer will discuss the foundation’s budget, the cost of the museum building or any endowment that might exist to ensure that taxpayers will not bear the cost of future maintenance.

“I have funded it up to this point and will continue to fund it,” Pulitzer said.

Another private collection-turned-museum, the Barnes Foundation in suburban Philadelphia, ran out of money last year after eating through a $10-million endowment. Stein insisted that will not happen in St. Louis but said she cannot release any financial information until after the board of trustees approves next year’s budget. Nor does she want to discuss the board, which includes mostly friends, relatives and close business associates of Emily Pulitzer.

“We are well taken care of,” is all Stein will say. “Don’t worry.”

For the moment, neither the restricted hours nor the secrecy has generated much concern in St. Louis. On the contrary, civic leaders and art lovers express delight that the public can at last view a private collection long considered one of the world’s finest. And visitors on opening day last week seemed to glory in the “un-museum” approach, saying they felt encouraged to linger and explore, even meditate in the hushed galleries.

“It feels almost religious,” said Phyllis Plattner, a painter visiting from Washington, D.C.

Although Plattner described the lack of wall signs as “elitist,” several other guests said they enjoyed a freedom they had not felt in other museums.

“There are no barriers here. No interpretive cards telling you what you are supposed to be thinking,” said Michael Drake, who works in a local winery.

Peering at a wall of Jasper Johns lithographs, 63-year-old Sondra Ellis agreed: “It lets you make your own judgment. You don’t feel like you ought to like this piece because it’s by an artist with a certain name.”

A gallery guide with descriptions of the works should be ready soon, so visitors interested in more information will have somewhere to turn. But it too will take a nontraditional approach, posing questions about the types of materials a sculptor used or exploring the relationship between light and space in a painting rather than reciting facts about the artist and the work.

The Pulitzer Foundation “offers a very different type of art viewing,” said Connie Homberg, chief curator of the more traditional St. Louis Art Museum. “It’s a very unique opportunity. There are not many places in the world with comparable buildings.”