Darren City Museum



The Darren City Museum is one of the North America's largest and most visited museums and a historic monument. Its distinctive silhouette is a cultural landmark in Darren City. Nearly 17,000 objects from prehistory to the mid-20th century are exhibited over an area of 400,300 square feet.

Founding
Mortimer Mortinheimer in 1898 constructed the enormous structure to act as a business headquarters. Later, after he was assassinated by anarchist Philipe Guiseppe, his daughter, Bernice Mortinheimer rose the Darren City Museum from the rotting corpse of Mortinheimer, inc.

Using the massive fortune she inherited from her father, Bernice bought artwork from all over North America. Initially her interests were mostly continental. She became enamoured with the Hudson River School painters which now occupy a significant portion of the museum. She also was a collector of Native art, both from the Darren region and from the south.

Later, however, Bernice Mortinheimer became an early proponent of Modernism. She was a close correspondent with Gertrude Stein and made frequent visits to Paris where she would buy artwork to bring back to Darren. In 1910 Bernice Mortinheimer became the first person to bring a Picasso painting to North America.

Modernist Acquisitions and Controversy
In 1920 Bernice Mortinheimer died and she willed the Museum to governmental ownership. A leading businessman, John Swindle was appointed to direct the museum. He set about the daunting task of organizing the diverse artwork the Bernice Mortinheimer collected over her years.

In 1949, after a number of years of quiet reorganization, the Museum made headlines for a massive purchase of over 500 works of Renaissance era work from an anonymous patron. This led to a public outcry as many accused the Museum directors and acquisitions department of war profiteering. In 1975 the Museum was sued by a family over a Van Eyck painting that was supposedly seized by the German government in 1939. The claimant successfully won the suit, but later, when the painting was carefully examined it was found to be a forgery. This has led to many questioning the rest of the 1949 purchase. Despite these allegations the Museum has not allowed any experts to examine their artwork.

The Polyhedron
In 1984, in the wake of the controversy, the directors of the Museum began a massive effort to modernize their museum, constructing a whole "Wing of Contemporary Art". Around 300 video, painting, and sculptures were added. The flat construction was capped with a "glass polyhedron", an indescribable modernist structure. Many criticized the architecture as not fitting in with the rest of the museum. Art critic Cornelius Crum once described it as looking like "a big piece of shit that levitated."

In 1985 the glass polyhedron collapsed, destroying all of the art held inside its bowels. Cornelius Crum described it as "an act of God". It happened in the middle of the night and noone was hurt. Some suspect separatist terrorists but no one has claimed responsibility.