A controversy is swirling around the planned expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in tony La Jolla, because it involves removing and changing crucial design elements created by well-known Postmodernist architects Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. An extraordinary petition sent to the museum’s CEO and board chairman, which calls it a “tremendous mistake” and asks the museum to reconsider before “irreparably damaging a cultural landmark” is supported by over 75 luminaries in the architecture world, from the noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger, MoMA Philip Johnson chief curator of architecture and design Martino Stierli, and architect Robert A.M. Stern, to various architecture professors at leading universities.
A view of Axline Court, the museum's former entrance hall, designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.
Currently, the entrance to the oceanside museum, dubbed Axline Court, is a soaring star-shaped enclosed courtyard with neon-lit arches and clerestory windows, designed in a 1996 museum renovation by Robert Venturi and his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, winners of the 2016 AIA Gold Medal. Outside the entrance was a pergola of oversized columns made of fiberglass, designed as a nod to the wooden pergola at the Scripps home on the property, willed to the museum by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps upon her death in 1941.
The $75 million expansion creates a new glass-enclosed entrance 100 feet away, removes the pergola, and changes Axline Court to an educational space, while quadrupling gallery space and adding sea-view terraces. Ground breaking for the design plan by Selldorf Architects, who designed the Neue Galerie in New York and was tapped for the expansion for the Frick Collection, was approved by the San Diego Planning Commission last year. The renovation is the fifth for MCASD La Jolla, closed since early 2017 but expected to reopen in 2020.
A rendering of the new overall design for the museum.
Enter an unlikely preservation advocate in the form of a graduate design student, age 24. After hearing a presentation by Annabelle Selldorf on her work at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the student, Izzy Kornblatt was dismayed that, in his view, a revered architect he studied was to be defiled. “A better building isn’t being produced,” he tells AD. Though he had never been inside MCASD but had co-organized an exhibit of Philadelphia School architects, Venturi included, in 2017 at the University of Pennsylvania, he wrote an article on its expansion for The Architect’s Newspaper in May. (Selldorf's firm directed any questions to the museum.)
Readers started contacting Kornblatt and Denise Scott Brown, started forwarding their concerns to others, and things snowballed. “Some weren’t originally convinced but were after I sent them Selldorf’s plans.” Composing the petition was a “group effort,” he said.
A closer view of the new entrance, designed by Selldorf Architects.
Brown, now 87, tells AD, “The museum will have more money for the galleries if they listen and keep the old entrance.” She recalls a 2014 phone message the museum director left with her secretary that merely said a renovation was planned but was unaware of the removal of and changes to her firm’s design.
As of now, the museum refuses to budge. Says museum CEO Kathryn Kanjo, “We fundamentally disagree with the premise of the petition…. Selldorf recalibrates the balance of the building by aligning the entry with the street grid of the village of La Jolla, signifying the museum as the anchor of the La Jolla Cultural Zone.”
The famous pergola in its new position, near the ocean on the opposite side of the museum.
Enter another key player: the La Jolla Historical Society, which preserved the pergola, making it the focal point of a public park on its lower terrace that opens mid-September. It now stands just 300 feet from its original location, across the street.
“We recognized the importance of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to the history of postmodern architecture, and the fact that this building was the only VSBA project executed in San Diego,” says Executive Director Heath Fox.
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