New Military Museums

Museum architecture has blossomed overthe past few decades. Art museums lead theway in terms of new buildings by superstar architectssuch as Frank Gehry, Herzog and de Meuron,Jean Nouvel, and Renzo Piano, among manymore. Those facilities have received public andprofessional recognition through media attentionand design awards. But other museum typologiesexist, one such being for buildings that showcasemilitary history and artifacts. All too often, onethinks of these as unsophisticated in their designand amateurish or antiquated in their exhibitions.Nowadays, nothing can be further from the truth.This volume examines more than thirty of them internationallythat were constructed over the pasttwo decades and more. The museums are featuredin individual entries and lavish color photography.Some were designed by internationallyrenowned architects such as Norman Foster, DanielLibeskind, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, andRobert A. M. Stern, but many more are the productsof creative, accomplished designers. Beyondthe architecture of these museums, exhibition andinstallation designs by noted specialist firms suchas Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Kossmann.dejong,and Gallagher & Associates, among others,have raised the bar in terms of immersive experiencesfor their visitors.New military museums presented within thebook are examined within the context of the historyof war memorials and military museums,the latter being a less well researched subject.In the end, military museums relate back to antiquesculptural commemorations of victoriouscampaigns and martial leaders, collections anddisplays of war trophies, and the search to finduseful architectural memorials, the latter especiallyso after the World Wars of the twentieth century.Architectural historian John Zukowsky has anearned doctorate from Binghamton University.While curator of architecture for The Art Instituteof Chicago (1978-2004), he organized a numberof award-winning exhibitions accompanied bymajor books. After that, he held executive positionswithin military-related museums such asthe Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in NewYork and the Pritzker Military Museum & Libraryin Chicago. Since 2012 he has authored severalbooks about architecture and design, includingWhy on Earth Would Anyone Build That (2015),Building Chicago: The Architectural Masterworks(2016), and Architecture Inside - Out: UnderstandingHow Buildings Work (2018).