Private Art Museum Underground
Thursday, December 6th, 2007This is so impressive, a beautiful underground place, so we had to write about it. Unfortunately it is not open for the public. So we decided to give at least a glimpse of it on the blog.
Norman and Norah Stone from San Fransisco are obviously very rich, and – among art aficionados – famous collectors of modern art. It seems they still had several millions of dollars after they spent a fortune on modern art, did not really know what to do with this money, and so they burned it by building a private art museum, not open to the public. Changing exhibitions reflect the continually growing collection of the couple.
However, we are more interested in the fact that the whole structure is located underground, inside one of the numerous caves in Napa Valley, California. Generally the caves are used for the Californian wine, which is grown in the valley. But this cave is dedicated to art. The Stones hired three young New York architects – Tim Bade, Jane Stageberg and Martin Cox, of Bade Stageberg Cox. The only thing visible from the surface is the entrance and the exit, both framed in Cor-Ten steel which will soon rust and become almost invisible. The inside has a size of 540m² and consists of a 35m long main hall with several smaller rooms branching off. The underground museum is called stonescape.
The cave is located at the weekend home of the couple, a 70,000m² property, with a modest 1887 farmhouse, a vineyard, a stand of redwood trees, a sculpture by Cady Noland, and a pool and pavilion designed the artist James Turrell and the architect Jim Jennings.