{"id":200069,"date":"2022-09-07T09:51:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T13:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/?post_type=id_project&p=200069"},"modified":"2023-01-09T09:13:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T14:13:22","slug":"olson-kundig-bob-dylan-center-tulsa","status":"publish","type":"id_project","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/olson-kundig-bob-dylan-center-tulsa\/","title":{"rendered":"Olson Kundig Offers a Fresh Narrative on the Life of Bob Dylan for a Center Honoring His Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"a
Graffiti artist Eric T. Burke painted the brick facade with a mural based on a portrait by photographer and film director Jerry Schatzberg, who shot the cover photo of Dylan\u2019s 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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September 7, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n

Words: <\/span>Rebecca Dalzell<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photography: <\/span>Matthew Millman<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Olson Kundig Offers a Fresh Narrative on the Life of Bob Dylan for a Center Honoring His Work<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

2022 Best of Year Winner<\/a> for Exhibition<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Dylan is famously enigmatic. He reinvents his own history, rarely grants interviews, and skipped the ceremony when he won the Nobel Prize in 2016. Dylan\u2019s archive, which the George Kaiser Family Foundation acquired that same year, hardly clears things up. Now held at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, its over 100,000 items\u2014including notebooks, recordings, and videos\u2014reveal little about the man himself. For Olson Kundig<\/a>, the firm selected to conceive the center\u2019s interiors and exhibition design, the musician\u2019s mystique presented an opportunity to take an unconventional narrative approach to the $10 million endeavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project is located in the city\u2019s downtown arts district and shares a block-long building with the Woody Guthrie Center. Both are owned by the GKFF and part of its mission to turn Tulsa into a cultural destination. (Dylan was a disciple of Guthrie, but otherwise has no connection to Oklahoma.) In 2017, the GKFF held a competition for the design of a facility that would house the archive and related exhibits. Architect Alan Maskin, a principal at and co-owner of Olson Kundig\u2014and a lifelong Dylan fan\u2014was relieved to learn that the musician was not involved. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to worry about pleasing Bob Dylan,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI wanted to make a portrait of him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the lobby of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by Olson Kundig, a lenticular wall displays names of donors on one side and, on the other, a 1986 portrait of the musician by photographer and filmmaker Lisa Law.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon, Maskin and his team\u2019s winning proposal tells the story of Dylan\u2019s creative trajectory from multiple perspectives. \u201cEarly in his career, Dylan started to create falsehoods and believed they were as relevant as truths,\u201d the architect continues. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting to make a portrait of someone who embraces that.\u201d The center could never be a traditional museum presenting a static history of Dylan\u2019s life. Instead, a diverse creative team\u2014including filmmaker Jennifer Lebeau, poet Joy Harjo, biographer Sean Wilentz, and fellow musician Elvis Costello\u2014contributed to the project. Their voices inform what Maskin calls a \u201ccubist portrait\u201d of the artist that can evolve over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site occupies an 11,000-square-foot, two-story building in what was originally a paper warehouse. A century old, its exposed brick walls and thick concrete columns had been retained but the space overall had been modernized for the previous tenant, a gallery. Olson Kundig conceived the interiors and galleries in tandem. Maskin met with archivists to understand the collection, then developed a narrative arc and drew the floor plan. \u201cI create a storyboard of the visitor experience, informed by imagery and objects, and formulate the environment through a storytelling lens,\u201d he explains. The exhibits had to appeal to a range of audiences, from Dylanologists to casual listeners, and go beyond the musician to explore broader ideas about creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrative starts on the street, where a 30-by-90-foot mural of Dylan stares out from the brick facade. The graffiti artist Eric T. Burke painted it based on a rare Jerry Schatzberg photograph and layered it onto existing ghost signage. \u201cEric let the past permeate through in the same way that history has informed Dylan,\u201d Maskin notes. Visitors enter into a small foyer that establishes the center\u2019s theme with two portraits showing the musician before and after he became a star, and a Dylan quote: \u201cLife isn\u2019t about finding yourself or finding anything. Life is about creating yourself and creating things.\u201d Dylan himself, who\u2019s also a metal worker, made the iron welcoming gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
Graffiti artist Eric T. Burke painted the brick facade with a mural based on a portrait by photographer and film director Jerry Schatzberg, who shot the cover photo of Dylan\u2019s 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Olson Kundig collaborated with 59 Productions, a British design and production studio, on the project\u2019s multimedia installations. \u201cThat team has a theater background, which was perfect because we were looking for this to be a visceral experience,\u201d Maskin says. Visitors wear headsets to listen to music and other content. Near the start of the galleries, Lebeau and 59 created an immersive film gallery of archival footage; in a clever bit of stagecraft, sheets of acrylic hang from thin steel rods to mimic paper flying out of typewriters. Elsewhere, visitors can play the part of a sound mixer in a music studio or listen to songs that inspired Dylan at a digital jukebox curated by Costello.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibits explore the creative process in various ways. One gallery digs deep into six seminal songs, like \u201cTangled up in Blue,\u201d and shows manuscripts and how tunes changed in the recording studio. Beyond is a library curated by Harjo with Dylan\u2019s writing and books that influenced him along with her own work. It segues visitors to temporary exhibitions on the second floor that focus on other artists; current shows feature additional photographs by Schatzberg and \u201cThe Gift,\u201d which further delves into the creative process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second floor also contains the Bob Dylan Archive, located in a reading room that\u2019s only open to researchers. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t let the public in, so we created views in,\u201d Maskin says. He surrounded the room with boxes displaying items from the archive. Among them is a bag stuffed with fan mail from the \u201960\u2019s. Dylan held onto it for decades, but, when it arrived in Tulsa, the letters were unopened. No one knows why he kept them. The notes show how Dylan touched many people\u2014but only deepen his mystery. The Bob Dylan Center invites us to draw our own conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See Interior Design\u2019s Best of Year Winners and Honorees<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Explore must-see projects and products that took home high honors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2022 WINNERS<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Bob
Six Dylan songs, some relating to the color blue, are showcased in a gallery defined by existing concrete columns that have been painted. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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An immersive gallery plays a film of archival Dylan footage and music, directed by Jennifer Lebeau, while heat-formed acrylic sheets mimic reams of paper flying out of typewriters set on custom plywood plinths.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Elvis Costello curated a digital jukebox with songs by musicians who influenced Dylan or whom he inspired.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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59 Productions designed the project\u2019s interactive studio control room. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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A self-adhering photographic print was applied to the donor wall\u2019s bent-aluminum sections.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Three notebooks contain drafts of lyrics for Dylan\u2019s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Words from a Dylan quote were rendered in vinyl, cut, and applied to the stair\u2019s oak risers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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A grid of 50 photographs, taken by Law (n\u00e9e Bachelis) in 1966, when Dylan stayed at the Castle, the Los Angeles mansion she lived in with future husband Tom Law, have been enlarged and printed on magnetic sheets to fill the stairwell.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The second-floor landing, with an existing blackened-steel balustrade and oak flooring, leads to temporary exhibitions about other artists and musicians and a private reading room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The second floor currently hosts a temporary Schatzberg exhibit and a wall displaying items from the Bob Dylan Archive; photography: Jonathan Mitchell. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The archive wall, inspired by German cabinets of wonder, contains items such as a piano harp, on which Dylan composed a song, and a bag stuffed with fan mail from the \u201960\u2019s; photography: Jonathan Mitchell. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
PROJECT TEAM<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Olson Kundig<\/span><\/a>: stephen yamada-heidner; marlene chen; holly simon; ryan botts; brian havener; karen duan; aiym zhumasheva<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
lilly architects<\/span><\/a>: architect of record<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
tillotson design associates<\/span><\/a>: lighting consultant<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
wallace design collective<\/span><\/a>: structural engineer<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
phillips + gomez<\/span><\/a>: mep<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
59 Productions<\/span><\/a>: Interactive Exhibits<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
bbi engineers; creo exhibits<\/span><\/a>: exhibit fabrication<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
PRODUCT SOURCES<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
THROUGHOUT<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n
eklipse architectural lighting<\/span><\/a>: lighting<\/span><\/section>\n\n\n\n
benjamin moore & co.; sherwin-williams company; sydney harbour paint company<\/span><\/a>: paint<\/span><\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n