The steel-and-bronze gates of The Baker Museum have been its gleaming calling card since the building was built in 2000.
As a beauty mark for the complex now known as Artis—Naples, those gates have had a busy existence. They've been the rendezvous point for ticketholders, a backdrop for fashion shoots, an eye-candy environment for selfies and tourist photos.
Foremost, the position of their 20-foot-high formed sculpture walls relayed practical information to all who passed: We are open. We are closed.
This week, the last part of that job will be outsourced. When The Baker Museum re-opens Sunday, Dec. 1, the gates will have been moved to its open courtyard to function more primarily as sculpture.
Roles shift for both sculpture and sculptor
It's a move that aligns, as if through the stars, with the decision of their creator, Albert Paley, to shut down the fabrication portion of his Rochester, New York, studio.
As Naples contractors deliberated the careful move of the gates, Paley, internationally known for his large-scale metal sculptures, was selling off the equipment that created them. At least three forklifts, blacksmith tools, a crane, grinders, saws and a plethora of tools all went on the auction block at Paley's Rochester studio Nov. 20.
His role shifts, by his own decision, to working more on design and aesthetics and outsourcing their fabrication. It's a major departure for Paley, 75, who is both meticulous in creation and intentionally quiet about interpretation.
He's philosophical about a role change for the gates, even slightly amused:
"It's very interesting that Auguste Rodin ... one of his most famous projects, 'Gates of Hell,' gates that were originally designed for the Museum of Decorative Art in the Louvre, took 40 years to do, and they never functioned as gates," he said. "They always functioned as a freestanding piece."
More: Baker Museum in Naples announces re-opening date
Artis—Naples staff consulted with him, and Paley's studio manager came to Naples to ascertain the gates would still retain their sense of public scherenschnitte, their cut-out pieces, admitting daylight sun. Their function of evoking a sense of place was in the plans as well.
"You don't walk through them, but they are situated to create a kind of entrance that still acts in reference to that sense of identity. And they do deal with that act of passage," he said.
Those details are important to Paley, whose commissions have ranged from the Albert & Victoria Museum gates in London and the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution to the St. Louis Zoo and the Sony Pictures Entertainment complex in California.
Paley public sculptures are a veritable trail up the East Coast of the United States; there's even a Google map that allows one to follow some 90 works visible around the U.S.
Three public pieces are in Southwest Florida, including "Cross Currents" on the campus of FGCU and a three-story polychrome metal sculpture for two condo buildings in the Fort Myers River District. The Paley Gates of The Baker Museum predate them both.
Read: Baker Museum preview makes a strong showing for its art; architecture to come
Paley created two works for Naples
Paley first came to Naples to create, of all things, door handles. Myra Janco Daniels — founder of the institution that holds the Baker Museum — said she wanted "something nice that people could touch on their way in" for the Hayes Hall building. The ribbonlike handles became that tactile welcome when its first building, Hayes Hall, was opened in 1989.
He was a natural choice for the creation of the gates when the museum was built in 2000.
"Myra, with the development of the philharmonic, was trying to bring a cultural dimension to the area. I was very well aware of the context and the volution of that," he said
"When she came to me, the thought process was how can I create something that is iconic? So scale was very, very important," he recalled. What emerged was a 20- by nearly 11-foot, four-partition work of formed and fabricated steel, stainless steel and bronze.
"What I try to do with each project is design a work that is specifically attuned to environment," he said. "A religious institution, say, is totally different than an athletic stadium."
Paley has created for both: he designed Florida State University's stadium gates and the gates for the Good Shepherd Chapel at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His gates for the stadium incorporate more of the javelin projectiles that depict speed and motion; for the chapel, the dominant elements are closer to nature — plant tendrils, a stained-glass window form and spiritual motifs.
"I think music does that incredibly well — you can create a mood which is very personal," he continued. "As a visual artist I try to bring that sensibility."
The elegance in Naples had to be natural, Paley recalled.
"When you're in Florida, nature is kind of all pervasive, " he observed. "The colors of the gates reflect metals that are used. ... They still speak of materials and speak of their origin. They're not pink or purple. I wanted that sense of nature."
Read: René Magritte works make first U.S. trip from Belgium vault to Naples
But what those organic metals suggest belongs primarily to the viewer, Paley emphasized: "No matter what I think, it's how people people respond."
"These are very difficult conversations," he said of his own works. "Because basically, when somebody is born, each individual has their own personality, their own emotional context, their own kind of intellectual capacities, and through the process of living and socializing one usually gravitates toward the sensibilities they feel an affinity toward."
"Even though it isn't literally a palm frond, the splayed area toward that top has that kind of reference," he said of his Baker Museum portal gates. "But one of the things that is very important with abstract form is that people bring their own associations. You saw a palm frond. Somebody else could see a sunrise. Someone else could see some kind of radial pattern or whatever that might be.
"If I was thinking of a palm frond and somebody sees a rising sun, it doesn't diminish their response, because it's really the response of the viewer that permanalizes that experience," he emphasized.
Although he is still committed to around a half dozen projects, Paley has a new role as well: legacy protection. Whether it comes from the precision in his first career days as a custom jewelry designer or not, Albert Paley is a exacting documentarian.
Paley has committed to computer his drawings, models, fabrication correspondence, manufacturing —"down to the aspect of subcontracting invoices for the kinds of bolts" — public and private response.
He even has had a full-time archivist for 40 years.
"(It was) Part altruistic and part of it self-serving," he acknowledged. "Documenting has always been part of every project I undertake."
"I have 29 terabytes of information, videos, interviews, lectures. There is information here that has never been collected from any artist," he said
At this point, Paley is seeking an institution to house the archive.
This is not, he added with a chuckle, a revisionist archive: "It's all there — the good, the bad and the ugly."
The Baker Museum, 5833 Pelican Bay Blvd., Naples, re-opens at noon Sunday, Dec. 1. Admission is free that day and for the rest of December.
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/life/2019/11/27/artis-naples-sculptor-albert-paley-like-naples-museum-gates-changing/4227290002/
2019-11-27 13:00:00Z
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