Local museum-goers probably aren’t yet worrying about how the Art Institute of Chicago will look in 2009, when the acclaimed starchitect Renzo Piano’s new wing for modern art has opened, and all the art work dating from the 20th Century has moved there.
So, they probably aren’t wondering who in the world Kulapat Yantrasast is either.
And that’s fine.
Yantrasast — a key player in the ongoing project to redesign, rearrange and enlarge the remaining galleries of the Art Institute’s digs (the first such project since the mid-’80s) — has worked in the shadow of an internationally acclaimed architect before, and it has worked out well for him.
In fact, his eight-year, protege-mentor relationship with the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando not only influenced his cool, minimalist style but led him into his architectural sub-specialty in museums — and to Chicago, where he is the youngest lead member on the redesign team, which includes John Vinci of the Chicago firm Vinci Hamp.
“Kulapat is an experienced and sensitive architect who understands well the purpose and qualities of art museums,” Art Institute director and president James Cuno has said. “And his personable style makes him a delight to work with.”
He’s also a delight to stroll through the museum with.
The grand tour
On a recent afternoon, beginning in the buzzing Michigan Avenue entrance of the Art Institute, Yantrasast grabbed a map of the building’s present floor plan and began a short walking tour of the several galleries that he would be designing (which include Prints and Drawings, African Amerindian, Asian, and European Decorative Arts and Tapestries) over the next couple of years.
While the project will feature totally independent redesigns by the other architects, in different zones, they’re all working toward a similar goal.
“My job is to help tell the story of art, from Medieval to modern,” said Yantrasast, who is 38, Thai born and has a dramatic shock of white in his head of otherwise jet-black hair. He joined “Mr Ando,” as he still calls his mentor, back in 1996, as Ando was beginning the design of the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, which opened in 2002.
“When I say Kulapat is brilliant,” says Marla Price, director of the Ft. Worth museum, who worked closely with Yantrasast on the project, “I’m not just whistling ‘Dixie.’ … He’s terrifically knowledgeable about art — art from all parts of the world — and he’s also extremely sensitive to its installation.”
Although he spoke not a word of Japanese when he started a PhD in architecture at the University of Tokyo, Yantrasast, in addition to becoming Ando’s project manager in Ft. Worth and on jobs around the world, also became his official translator. He left Ando’s Osaka firm three years ago to start his own partnership in Los Angeles, Workshop Hakomori Yantrasast, which won the commission to design the Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Yantrasast’s first full-scale museum plan and the first new art museum in the world to receive the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, to open in October.
Point of entry
But this is a very different sort of project, and one issue the team of architects and curators plan to tackle, according to Yantrasast, is that with the present configuration “you come in at the middle of the movie” — or the telling of a story. The new design overall will be more chronological, but also more geographically and culturally coherent.
“From the curators’ standpoint, that’s what you do. You talk about art and how it developed over the years. And they have the right collection to tell the story.
“But in that sense,” he adds, “it’s a pity that people arrive in the middle of the movie and just move on. So you get scenes, but not the whole thing. So even though you appreciate your visit … you don’t have the chance to read the relationships the different characters have, like in a movie. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes you want to see more than that.”
For many reasons, few museums display their entire collections — far from it — but another virtue of the new wing and subsequent redesign is the museum is also going to have an opportunity to tell stories in greater detail. “They will be able to show a lot of art that they can’t show now,” Yantrasast said, as he took a quick turn through Chinese, Japanese and Korean arts, and into the sunlit southern atrium where the grand modern staircase leads up to the second level of Modern and Contemporary.
He paused. (“This is amazing,” he said, peering out the tall curtained window, where you can see the tracks of the Metra South Shore Line. “The train is a great thing here.”)
Sense of identity
According to the museum, each department will in fact be able to show more of their respective collections thanks to a full one-third increase in overall square footage. “Many curators that I am working with have been here 25, 30 years, they know the collection intimately, and it’s the first and only time they’ll be able to do something like this,” said Yantrasast. “The more I talk with the curators, the more I learn every day. There’s so much passion … Everyone is amazingly excited.”
Yantrasast may be excited, too, but like his architecture, he seems outwardly serene and understated. And when he talks about the relationship of architecture to art, he is serious, and quietly thoughtful.
“I like talking about art,” he said. “We have to ask, what is the best situation a person and an art object can have in a relationship … and on a bigger overall issue, what is the Art Institute? What is its identity, its feel?”
Yantrasast still has a working relationship with Ando and, along with the influence of Ando’s ethos, which he treasures (“His office is almost like a Zen monastery … it’s like a Japanese tea ceremony — everything is so well composed, every movement is being observed, every little thing is about intentions.”), the younger architect also has a great love of surprises, which he attributes to his less serene Thai background. And which he hopes to make a part of the redesign.
He headed up the stairs and made his way through the modern art — and into one of the Art Institute’s most iconic rooms, containing Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street; Rainy Day.”
‘Great Painting’
“This is a great painting,” he said. “But the question for me is whether people come to it like an altarpiece, or whether they come around a corner, and say, ‘What’s this here?’ That’s important. That’s a lot of what we do. We create space, and think about how people move in space, and how you can play around for them to make discoveries.
“Museums are places where people need to feel they can discover things,” he added. “What is important to you is a thing you discover.”
“The balance to that is the scholar relationship — the curator, who wants you to look at a painting with a view to the fact that there is an artistic development that should be noted.”
Yantrasast makes it clear: “I’m not the one in charge of telling the story. I’m helping them. My reading or philosophy of what art is will go into my work … but I also have to have the practical aspect of how to make construction, how to make this object look best….”
As serious as Yantrasast is, a wry sense of humor becomes apparent when he attempts to explain to the layman the delicate art, the balancing act, of redesigning a place with the stature of the Art Institute.
“This institution is like a person,” he said. “Your grandmother. You want to pick up some part of her personality, but you don’t want to do something that’s going to embarrass her, like put her in a miniskirt.”
But will a venerable grandmother that Chicago has come to know and love so well be recognizable after her makeover? That’s seems like a valid concern.
“It will feel like a new person, maybe after a good operation. No, not like Joan Rivers. That’s not what we try to do. We don’t try to be pretty necessarily. … Maybe thin.”
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ernunn@tribune.com
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Kulapat Yantrasast’s current projects
Grand Rapids Art Museum. The first new art museum in the world to receive the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. Opens October 2007.
Japanese Concept Spa, Santa Monica. POLA Kirei, under construction, 2000 square feet.
Art Bridge, Los Angeles. A new pedestrian bridge/viewing platform crossing the Los Angeles River. It will be fabricated from trash salvaged from the river below.
Private residence, Hollywood. A 7,000-square-foot house, under design, for a prominent young film-industry couple.
Private residence, Malibu. A project in collaboration with Tadao Ando, this 40,000-square-foot home for the Bell family, originally from Chicago. Under construction.
Six Salvaged Boxes: Art and the Environments/Design Solutions, Grand Rapids, Mich. An exhibition on the green design of the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
