As the idea of the museum slowly took shape, I dreamed of preserving some of the intimacy I had enjoyed with the works of art. I came up with the concept to which architect Renzo Piano responded brilliantly: we would rotate the works of art.

We would show only portions of the collection at a time, but displayed in generous and attractive space. The public would never know museum fatigue and would have the rare joy of sitting in front of a painting and contemplating it. Works would appear, disappear, and reappear like actors on a stage. Each time they would be seen with a fresh eye. Habit blunts vision.
"A museum should be a place where we lose our head," said Marie-Alain Couturier, the Dominican father who initiated a renaissance in sacred art in France in the 1940s. Alas we rarely lose our head in a museum. Great museums are overloaded with masterpieces and we are bombarded with information that distracts from contemplation and remains foreign to the magic of a great painting. And what is art if it does not enchant? Art is incantation. It is the fusion of the tangible and intangible.
Dominique de Menil, 1987
René Magritte, La lunette d'approche,1963
© 2000 Charly Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.