Creating conviviality: David Kohn’s flexible response to a challenging brief

Milan – ‘As Hermann Czech says, a good restaurant is to be remembered and not noticed,’ architect David Kohn told LS:N Global last week at the Villa Reale. ‘When there, what you notice is the occasion.’

This is an excellent summary of the ‘Tutti a tavola!’ exhibition he has overseen in the Gallery of Modern Art in the Villa Reale, whose focus is on food, the Italian kitchen and conviviality.

Kohn’s brief was complex, including many intangibles and elements he could not control.

His first potential problem came from the space. While he was allowed to play with the downstairs archives, he had to leave the rest of the galleries entirely intact.

His other major problem was the nature of the show. Contributions were commissioned from more than 40 curators, from academics such as the University of Milan’s Eva Cantarella to food anarchists such as Bompas & Parr.

Kohn’s solutions use lighting, translucent screens and lightweight, indoor scaffolding to enable, direct and entertain visitors. Cleverly placed lighting highlights the gallery’s extant collection where useful – or focuses the visitor’s attention elsewhere. For example, in a room where an extract from L’albero degli zoccoli by Ermanno Olmi about the slow food movement is displayed on a screen, one irrelevant painting is screened off, while another that is relevant – a 1901 painting called Il Quarto Stato about a peasants’ revolt over food – is highlighted.

Elsewhere, the scaffolding provides a stage for displays such as a screening of Peter Greenaway’s magical The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese.

Kohn’s work has enabled the art to come to the fore, in exactly the right way: remembered and not noticed.