What makes the perfect art gallery?

Posted by JJ on Wednesday, October 1, 2008

On the eve of the opening of the new Saatchi Gallery, Observer architecture critic and ex-director of the Design Museum looks at the continuing appeal of the big white space.

The Saatchi Gallery, according to Bayley, is another real-life case study of what a Gallery could and should be, moving from a money generating buzz-machine to something that exudes an appropriately respectable aura in the eyes of the art amateur.

This is especially interesting at a time when the typology of the gallery and its museum cousin is shifting towards an unnecessarily commercial stance; when the museum shop has become more important to a museum’s operation - in many cases - than the actual art shows that it curates and hosts.

read the article by Stephen Bayley, at The Observer