At no point during our recent interview did new UVA Art Museum Director Bruce Boucher start screaming “Darkness! Imprisoning me!” or cursing Napster. Yet, as we spoke a bit about the renovation and planned expansion of the Bayly—the building that houses the art museum, which reopens in September—I found myself thinking of Metallica. Exit sense, enter segue.
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Hello, art museum fans! Are you ready to rock? UVA Art Museum Director Bruce Boucher is more heavy metal than he may realize, and the museum’s renovations may prove it. |
For more than two decades, Metallica has been inextricable from heavy metal’s greatest, most heavily spiked ambitions—a group tasked with reinventing or redirecting a genre on every new album. (If you ask me, they succeeded roughly 30 percent of the time.) The short-haired follow-ups to 1991’s “black” album tried to refashion metal with, well, fashion, and suffered; the band sought, but didn’t destroy. The group’s best album since 1991, however, is last year’s Death Magnetic, a very intentional return to the inspired battery of the 1986 classic, Master of Puppets. The point? Sometimes you find new inspiration in old models.
I’m being wildly simplistic here, but what was UVA’s Arts Gateway to the University plan if not a change as drastic as Metallica’s decision to cut its mullets off and lighten up? After all, when you reshape the look of a band, you invite in a new crowd of listeners. The Arts Gateway—an estimated $118 million plan to replace prime real estate on Emmet Street with a new arts complex—hoped to do the same. At a point, however, ambition seemed to clash with economics: The Arts Gateway, as C-VILLE reported last week, has been indefinitely shelved.
“The thing to remember is that the Arts Gateway was going to be an interdisciplinary center, and [the art museum] would have been part of a large number of other features and facilities there,” said Boucher during an interview. “The other thing to remember is that, in the present economic climate, a very ambitious scheme like that would take a long time.”
So, how do you repurpose the old model to achieve new goals? Let’s consult the metal gods.
My two best Metallica moments of the last year both involve the song “One,” from 1988’s …And Justice For All. Mash-up artist Girl Talk wedged the tune’s brutal guitar triplet finale between a Carpenters sample and Soulja Boy’s “Donk” on the album Feed the Animals. And ATO Records artists Rodrigo y Gabriela covered the same song and merged it with Dave Brubeck’s jazz standard, “Take Five.” [For more about Rodrigo y Gabriela’s new album on ATO, read the Feedback blog at c-ville.com.]
Whether we’re talking metal or museums, sometimes it makes more sense to take an old piece of art and make it speak in new ways. Renovations to the Bayly will make for better access to the museum’s permanent collection—a new appreciation of the classic tracks, if you will. And UVA needed a “new” interdisciplinary system like Metallica needed a haircut—not at all. Ruffin Hall, the sexy new studio art and gallery space across the street, hosted a few collaborative exhibits this year. And loyal UVA donor Hunter Smith pledged a gift of nearly $11 million for a new music rehearsal hall, to be completed in 2011 and located near Ruffin and the museum.
Boucher put it well during our interview: “I think it’s better in the foreseeable future for us to be on Rugby Road and to utilize as much as possible both the existing buildings and the possibility of expansion behind the Bayly.” Or, to borrow from a Metallica title, maybe the Arts Gateway was simply a thing that should not be. Rock on, Bayly.
More new ideas for old spaces
Feedback heard last week that Four County Players, the local theater based in Barboursville, plans to make use of some previously unexplored basement space for a two-week run of Hamlet starting June 26. Claire McGuirk, previously of cakes’n’ale theatre company, will take on the role of the slightly daffy Danish prince. For those of you who can’t make the trip to Barboursville, you can catch a preview performance at 12th Street Taphouse on Thursday, June 25. Check the calendar at c-ville.com for show details.
