Gateway Galleries
Airports create cultural connections with a profusion of museum-quality art.
February 01, 2012
In 2011, the world’s airlines carried more than 2 billion passengers, with more than 300,000 of them earning more than a million miles each on their frequent-flyer cards. More than 400,000 people work within a five-mile radius of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, and 500,000 are employed within a five-minute drive of Chicago’s O’Hare. For the millions of frequent travelers who shuttle back and forth between their homes and closest airports, and for the workers who spend a good part of their days (and nights) toiling within an airport’s shops, restaurants and other service areas, I would imagine a good number would now elect to live within the airport environment as well.
During the past decade, airports in the United States and overseas expanded and modernized to meet the growing appetite for air travel; and entirely new commercial districts consisting of hotels, convention centers, small industries and freight companies have grown around them. In the center of these districts sits an architecturally savvy airport filled with high-end restaurants, clothing boutiques, movie theaters and bowling alleys. Singapore’s Changi Airport even has a four-story waterslide. The big airports have become cities within their regions; the smaller airports, the “Main Streets” of their neighborhoods.
Eclectic art exhibits, once confined to museums, art galleries and spacious lobbies of multinational corporate headquarters, have slowly infiltrated these airport cities, much to the delight of appreciative passengers who have the time and sensibility to “look up” during check-in and duty-free shopping. Airport operators now hire art curators who borrow or purchase beautiful works of art that soften the airport experience by adding another cultural amenity to the city-like environment.
In the 1960s, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport began installing artwork in its terminal, and today about 60 works of art by Dutch and international artists are displayed in the public areas before passport control. Amsterdam’s popular Rijksmuseum maintains an annex at the airport, showing works by Dutch masters including Ferdinand Bol, Jan Steen and Jacob van Ruysdael.
Copenhagen Airport continues to add artwork to a collection that also dates to the 1960s. The words on its website attest to the Danes’ serious approach to selecting art for their terminal spaces: “A piece of art in an airport has to compete with signs, advertisements and tempting shop windows for the attention of the passenger. It must be an integral part of the architectural surroundings, and yet be visible enough and demonstrative enough to catch the eye of the preoccupied passenger rushing past it.” One of the more intriguing pieces in Copenhagen is Hanne Varming’s sculpture, Girls at the Airport, in which two life-size bronze figures lean over the balcony of Terminal 3, viewing the crowd below. Ms. Varming is a well-known Danish artist whose work can also be seen in Copenhagen’s National Art Museum.
Singapore’s Changi Airport is often rated the best in the world for passenger amenities, and not just because of its nap rooms, showers, waterslides and free Internet. Its Terminal 3, opened in 2008, is truly a thriving 24/7 city, containing a dry cleaner, dental clinic, grocery store, pharmacy, indoor amusement park and dozens of newly commissioned public art installations. Among them: the lovely marble Floral Inspirations by Han Sai Por; the colossal, 24-foot Going Home by the Chinese artist Han Mei Ling; and Baet Yeok Kuan’s colored stainless steel seabirds, Birds in Flight.
Incheon International Airport in Seoul is home to a museum and art gallery, the Korean Culture Museum, located on Concourse 4F. Throughout the museum, passengers can find a range of exhibits focused on traditional art, music, the print culture and the royal culture, played out across a variety of art mediums including stone art, paintings, tablets and sculpture. The museum is open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the recommended allotment for passengers to take in the offerings is around 20 minutes.
In northern Spain, at Bilbao-Loiu Airport, local authorities have taken airport art to a new level by hiring Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in 2000 to design a soaring white concrete and steel terminal the locals call La Paloma (The Dove). Inside this stunning terminal is Basque artist Jesus Lizaso’s steel Tent for the Nearsighted; and outside, juxtaposed against the white building, is Eduardo Chillida’s Tribute to the Wind, a dark iron sculpture that captures the attention of every arriving passenger.
North American airports are also using art to enhance the interior of new or expanded terminal buildings. Vancouver International Airport’s YVR Art Foundation was established in 1994 to foster the development of Northwest Coast aboriginal art, and this is displayed throughout the airport. Traditional native art like Musqueam weavings, totem poles and magnificent cedar sculptures are joined by modern art pieces using fiberglass, metal and acrylic materials to symbolize British Columbia’s aboriginal heritage. Bill Reid’s The Spirit of Haida Gwaii: The Jade Canoe, located in YVR’s International Terminal, is so representative of the region’s early peoples that it is depicted on Canada’s $20 bill. The airport’s architectural elements, including the Sea to Sky Rock Wall, the indoor Creek and Aquarium and the 55-foot vertical Green Wall near the rapid transit station, bring the spectacular terrain of the area within reach of every passenger. When Sacramento International Airport opened Terminal B in fall 2011, more than a dozen major public artworks went on display, supported by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. One of the new pieces is Leap, artist Lawrence Argent’s red, 56-foot-long aluminum and steel rabbit suspended within the terminal’s atrium.
“Airports are the gateways to our region, and we’re proud that these artworks will play a role in shaping the perception of Sacramento. Public art can transform the identity of a place and is also an economic strategy for the city,” said Rhyena Halpern, executive director of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. Other art pieces at SMF includes Camille Utterback’s Digital Window and Joan Moment’s blue mosaic floor, A Fragment of the Universe.
The San Francisco Arts Commission integrated several new works into San Francisco International Airport’s new $383 million Terminal 2, a complete renovation of the former 1954-era terminal. Kendall Buster’s unique Topograph hangs above the departure hall, and Janet Echelman’s surreal Every Beating Second has delicate layers of translucent colored netting which seem to float just below the ceiling. The San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum (aka SFO Museum), located within the International Terminal, is designed to resemble the airport’s 1930s-era lobby and displays memorabilia related to West Coast aviation history. The SFO Museum, the country’s only accredited museum located within an airport, displays artwork at several rotating exhibitions throughout the airport complex.
Florida’s Broward County has a busy Public Arts Program that has included placing artwork in Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport for the past 30 years. The airport currently has 35 works of art, including Jody Pinto’s popular Light Cylinders.
Twenty miles south of Fort Lauderdale, Miami International has been undergoing one of the country’s largest redevelopment projects to include an additional runway; two new passenger terminals; and, in cooperation with the Miami-Dade Art in Public Places program, an infusion of contemporary art. Emilio Adán Martinez’ Andan Volando, the murals of Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó (aka Carybé), Paul Marcellini’s photographs in the “Experience the Everglades” exhibit and Christopher Janney’s Harmonic Convergence all provide MIA with the vibrancy and color so indicative of the Miami area.
Norman Mineta San José International Airport is keeping up with Silicon Valley’s role in the technology industry by joining with the San José Public Art Program to provide several of what are being called Art + Technology exhibits, including Björn Schülke’s Space Observer, located in the airport’s new $1.3 billion Terminal B; and the 1,200-foot-long, seven-story-high mural, Hands, by artist Christian Moeller. Moeller’s work, with giant, painted images of the hands of 54 Silicon Valley residents, is displayed on the façade of the airport’s new rental car and public garage facility.
Denver International’s public art program has commissioned more than 30 unique art pieces within this large complex, including Luis Jimenez’ Mustang. For many reasons, the 32-foot mustang of painted fiberglass over a steel frame caused a lot of controversy when it was installed in 2008; but airports, like museums, urban plazas and city parks, are getting used to controversy, especially when visions of various artists are placed before a diverse public. It is all part of airports transforming into cities unto themselves.
In their 2011 book, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, authors John D. Kasada and Greg Lindsay offer a futuristic vision where airports will no longer be on the periphery of cities but will be at the center of them, as business executives, multinational companies and suppliers want to be as close as possible to the transportation hubs that lead to their global markets. Their vision of the future is, of course, already upon us.
As airports continue to expand to accommodate the tremendous increase in passenger and freight traffic, it is, and will be, art — paintings, sculptures, eclectic mobiles, photographs, multimedia murals — that helps soothe the harried traveler and offers an oasis of calm before passengers step into the narrow steel capsule bound for Shanghai or Sydney.
Art & Leisure
Airline first- and business-class lounges at many international airports are the beneficiaries of the profusion of new artwork in the world’s airports. When premium passengers pass works of art on their way from the ticket counters to the hushed atmosphere of upper- class lounges, they expect to be surrounded by high- quality artwork inside the lounge.
Iberia airlines’ velázquez vIP lounge in Madrid’s Barajas airport’s new terminal 4 uses an authentic feng shui design to create a pre-flight atmosphere with harmony and simplicity. Bamboo wood brings positive energy to the spaces, and the lounge features design elements such as moss and river stones placed asymmetrically and in odd numbers. In the nearby dalí lounge, two artistically placed waterfalls add the soothing sound of falling water to the relaxing ambience.
At Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, air France’s la Première lounge, in cooperation with the Parisian art gallery Jérôme de noirmont, is displaying contemporary sculpture by Scottish artist david Mach, who uses match heads to construct colorful, three-dimensional faces.
In the Qantas First Class lounge at Sydney’s International terminal, australian designer Marc newson creates a unique lounge environment by arranging Poltrona Frau furniture; Carrara marble; and a 12-foothigh, 90-foot-long indoor garden wall with 8,400 plants.
At Seattle-tacoma International airport, within the alaska airlines Board room lounge, notable works of art include large glass pieces by the world-famous artist and Washington native dale Chihuly.
