Student Project for a Small Art Museum, Interior Perspective

In the 1940s many European architects turned away from the austerity of functionalist modern architecture and called for a return to representational and symbolic meanings in buildings. Seeking new modes of architecture with social and community value, architects integrated painting and sculpture into their designs, a historical practice that had declined in the modern era. German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the first of this group of Modernists to frame his buildings around works of art, such as the figural sculpture by Georg Kolbe in his Barcelona Pavilion of 1929. Another example of Mies’s vision is his famous design for a Museum for a Small City (1941–43), published in Architectural Forum. Along with George Danforth, his student at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Mies designed the museum as a radical open frame to give visitors more direct interaction with works of art and allow paintings and sculptures to shape the space of the building itself. The lessons from this idea were integral to the progressive embrace of public art by modern architects and new ideals for art museums.