The summer before Junior year, I studied abroad in Arles, France. Located in the Camargue, the location is known for its history as part of Provence. On a field trip with my summer study abroad group, I went to the LUMA Tower in Arles. The tower is an art museum containing modern art in its collection, yet its exterior is loosely inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Before I left the house, my host mother had expressed her disdain for the structure. Seeing it myself made me think more critically about how architecture interacts with local identity and public memory. Frank Gehry’s tower immediately stands out against the older Roman and medieval architecture surrounding it, and several locals described it negatively because it feels disconnected from the character of the city. Unlike Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which many people view as reflecting the city’s industrial history through its metal exterior and symbolizing the hope for economic renewal that it, in turn, brought the city. To my host mother and her friends, the LUMA Tower seemed imposing, especially in contrast to other art institutions such as Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, which takes place every year within the city’s traditional churches, Roman colosseum, city hall, and supermarket. This comparison connects to the GEM learning goal of intercultural understanding because it pushed me to think about how public art and architecture are interpreted differently depending on historical and cultural context. Before this experience, I tended to view bold contemporary architecture as automatically innovative, especially a Gehry structure, which would supposedly revitalize a community. Hearing local perspectives complicated that assumption and made me reflect upon the place I was living as more traditional than I thought, and more economically and historically rooted in their provincial history. Architecture can feel alienating when people do not see their own history or identity reflected in it. At the same time, I recognized that as a visitor, I initially appreciated the tower mostly for its visual spectacle without fully understanding the local relationship to the space. Additionally, I took comfort in the spiral staircase in its interior, which was familiar to me because of my and my father’s love for the Guggenheim in New York. This reflection upon LUMA helped me become more critically self-aware about how easily tourists can prioritize aesthetics and novelty over local experience and cultural continuity, and how difficult it is to understand a building’s socio-economic context.
