Lasting symbol of the gamble

By Darrell Laurant

Published: November 15, 2008

ROANOKE — Wow!

I know there will be some people — OK, maybe even a lot of people — put off by the dramatic contours of the new Taubman Art Museum on Salem Avenue in downtown Roanoke. It’s so, well, artsy.

Even Bedford artist and art lover Annice McCabe, who does like it, grinned when I asked her about it.

“It looks like something just landed there,” she said with a laugh.

It has also been compared by one observer on a message board to “the wreck of the Flying Nun.”

Personally, I tend more to agree with a Virginia Tech engineering student named Charles Smith, who told the Roanoke Times, “I think every city needs kind of a weird-looking building.”

According to architect Randall Stout, who combined his East Tennessee roots with Los Angeles flair, his creation is supposed to evoke both Roanoke’s railroad heritage and the humpbacked skyline of the Blue Ridge Mountains. If you think it looks more like a pterodactyl, that’s your privilege.

The Taubman opened to the public on Nov. 8, and to anyone inclined to equate art museums with hushed decorum and portraits of long-dead people in formal clothes, this kickoff would have been a bit of a shock. Rock bands blared from under tents, strange characters on stilts stalked up and down the long lines of spectators, and the mood was giddy. For several blocks around, Center in the Square was buzzing.

Everything about this new edifice seems fortuitous, especially the location and the timing. When the family that owned Grand Home Furnishings, wedged between Center in the Square and Roanoke’s signature H&C Coffee sign, decided in the 1990s to donate the building and the land to the common good, art proponents in the Roanoke Valley fell over each other trying to be first in line. As it turned out, they were.Before the three-year construction period was complete, the museum had a price tag of $66 million — $15 million of that from the Taubman family. One can only speculate darkly about how it might have fared a year from now, given the current economic climate (mostly cloudy to stormy).

For the critic who expressed her “Flying Nun” opinion, here’s something to contemplate: What would a half-finished Wreck of the Flying Nun have looked like? That could have happened.

Making the gamble even more impressive was the fact that Roanoke already had an art museum, tucked away on the third floor of Center in the Square. By some standards, it was perfectly adequate.
Yet there were also those who felt the city needed a “signature building,” weird or not. Now, it looks as if they have it.

Personally, I was more interested in what was inside the Taubman than outside. I’m not an art expert, but I’ve been to a whole lot of art museums (my wife Gail’s influence) and found a lot to like here.
Yes, there are the portraits of stern-faced, long-expired rich people. Moving on a bit, there is a Winslow Homer, a John Singer Sargent, a Thomas Hart Benton and a lot of canvases connected in some way with Thomas Eakins.

At the same time, there were a couple of rooms with interactive video toys, another room dedicated to the history of tattoo art (so Roanoke) and a small niche filled with jeweled handbags hanging from a decorative tree.

In other words, there was a little something for everybody. That’s the art museum of the 21st century.

The most dramatic image, for me, was a near-life-sized blown-up photograph of a railroad trestle. You could see a long drop from the tracks to the tops of evergreens far below, but what captured everyone’s attention was the man standing on the trestle, leaning way over the edge as if in the process of jumping.

This must have been Photoshopped, I thought, unless there was an invisible net right below where the man was headed. I doubt anyone would have actually taken a photograph of a bridge jumper in mid-leap, nor would just a photo likely been placed on public view.

Or maybe it was supposed to symbolize the gamble that Roanoke took in putting all this together.