Many of you may know that on December 31, Worcester’s Higgins Armory Museum closed its doors after 83 years of operation.  This had been announced earlier in the year, and I scheduled a couple of visits to say our formal farewells.  The Armory has become a family favorite – both for its amazing exhibits and its overall strange existence. Anyone travelling north of Boston on I-90 has passed the steel and glass structure, festooned daily with billowing flags and a bowsprit knight.  If you did not ask yourself what it was doing there, shame on you.

It is unclear what will become of the 42,000 square foot building; the 24 suits of armor and incredible collection of oddities will integrate with the holdings of the Worcester Art Museum.  Apparently the Higgins had been running in the red for years, and they repeatedly turned down offers from major institutions to purchase the collection.  I can imagine that Higgins loyalists would not want to separate the armor from the building, the interior of which is nothing short of a medieval castle, with pointed arches, high stone ceilings, and several large steeds roaming the halls.

John Higgins was an industrialist who owned the Worcester Pressed Steel Company.  Suits of armor were his passion, and in 1929 he built a museum next to his factory, appropriately mannered with a steel exoskeleton over glass skin. Being in the building was a strange experience of traveling back and forth in time – cloisters and great halls on every floor connected by muscular steel and glass staircases.  But the greatest thing of course, has always been the collection.  I am a nut for chainmail, and there was a lot of it – not only with the 13th through 16th century European armors, but Asian and Middle Eastern as well.  While I have longed to wear it, mail (maille) weighs a ton which is why you only see it as something you would not be caught dead in, as furniture, or on runway mannequins. Maybe the 21st century laser-cut dress will allow us to put it back in style, clingy yet practical with just the right amount of sparkle.

My sons were always disappointed that John Higgins was not much into swords and other weaponry.  There is the odd battle-ax, lance and maul, but they are not the stars of the show.  The Higgins Armory was all about male fashion, and this kind of fashion needs no accessorizing. So if you can arrange a visit to the Armory building, run don’t walk.  Otherwise, visit WAM in the Spring when they launch their show “Knights!”

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On the heels of our current exhibit, “Makers in the Making”, I have been preoccupied by the difference between concept and action.  Dozens of times during the week I am struck by small ideas: a chair refurbishment, a fantastic tree house, a mobile kitchen island, a rock garden. These are concepts that could be enacted upon, and even completed within the space of a weekend, yet they never get done. Things get in front of them, or they are written on a sketchbook page and soon forgotten.

Fortunately there are those who are driven to make.  Dedee Shattuck opened an eponymous gallery in Westport, MA a few years ago. It is a lovely, peaceful architecture, situated at the edge of a wooded area  Click here to go to the gallery website. I make an effort to visit each season, less for the art (which is generally excellent) than for the calming effect of the space which is an oasis after a few days with the extended family. The gallery is directly behind a wonderful shop/cafe, and usually I can leave the kids with my parents and steal a few minutes with the paintings and objects currently on exhibit. But this time the boys were with me and the moment we entered, I knew it was a mistake.  Now they are old enough not to break or damage, but “WHO would pay FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS for THIS??!” came through loud and clear, thanks to the excellent acoustics. Dedee graciously suggested my children might prefer to run around in the wooded sculpture garden, which turned out to be the sanity saving activity of the day.

“Art in the Environment,” is an exhibition of work by faculty and graduate students from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass Dartmouth. The setting is a winding path through a forest, where moss is still electric green among the brown leaves, and you cannot see the art until you happen upon it.  It is surprising to discover “Fall” by Russell Prigodich, an enormous leaf hovering in the air with no obvious means of support, and “Green Men” by  Ellen Lewis Watson, two hollow jackets floating without heads – a little bit “Blair Witch Trial” and a little bit Ichabod Crane, but somehow beautiful.  On your way out, you might miss Rob Greene’s “Down and Out” leaning against a boulder. It is a huge sad head made of sticks.

The strength to fully execute an idea is something to admire, and I suspect that architects can appreciate this as well as anyone.  Time and Money often seek to deny what was intended—and perhaps the bigger the idea, the more vulnerable it is to compromise.  Yet in spite of it all, some things make it through.  Enough people believed in an ICA, Community Rowing, Genzyme Center, and Hancock Tower to enable something remarkable to be built. And it is worth remembering that each time we consider renovation and/or development; it is easier to make something unremarkable, or to make nothing at all.  So within that context, I am grateful for those who would create beauty and provocation in a quiet back yard, for only a small audience to discover. And I ask myself if, as an architect, I am doing all that I
could?

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This is not just good. It is sublime! – Nader

SHAKE from Variable on Vimeo.

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