The answer is Glenstone, fifteen miles from the National Gallery of Art and a world away.
Mitchell and Emily Rales's private contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland, is a rare amalgam. The current museum, designed by the legendary architect Charles Gwamthey, is one of three interrelated buildings nestled in a notch in the landscape within a vast pastoral estate. The museum's interior spaces are just generous enough to show to advantage art of varying sizes, neither dwarfing nor cramping the individual works of art. Exhibitions are scheduled to last a year or more--there have been four since the museum's 2006 opening--and each are comprised only of work from the Rales's private collection. Outside and throughout the estate are works of major artists such as Richard Serra, whose Contour 290 is pictured above. This is the paradox of Glenstone--an almost unimaginable scale that nonetheless retains an essential sense of intimacy. It is a paradox that leads to a kind of perfection not easily found in more institutional settings, regardless of their scale or of their quality.
Access to this very special place is limited and by appointment only. We'll be visiting Glenstone on our upcoming Washington, D.C. trip, sponsored by Preservation Greensboro. For more information CLICK HERE.
For a few additional photographs of Glenstone CLICK HERE
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