"Rich pickings for super-star architects (US museums: As the US museum boom continues despite the recession The Art Newspaper surveys the mechanics of the expansion)," The Art Newspaper, Apr. 1994, pp. 17-18.

The recession seems not to have slowed the U.S. museum boom

by Jason Edward Kaufman

Against all economic odds, American museums are hell-bent for growth. Even as they close an extra day or two per week, limit galleries to alternating schedules, fire employees, trim programs, reduce acquisitions, and all but abandon expensive exhibitions, many are in the process of expanding. Virtually every major museum in New York City has joined the act. The Metropolitan recently overhauled its galleries for 19th-century European art and is about to unveil the vast Irving Galleries for Southeast Asian Art, bringing to a close the $200-million quarter-century master plan by architect Kevin Roche. Within recent memory, the Guggenheim added a high rise to its renovated Frank Lloyd Wright landmark and opened the Guggenheim/SoHo (Arata Isozaki); The Brooklyn Museum gutted and refurbished an entire wing that had lain dormant for decades (Arata Isozaki/James Stewart Polshek); The Jewish Museum completed a huge expansion of its Fifth Avenue chateau (Kevin Roche); and The Museum for African Art moved into larger quarters in SoHo (Maya Lin). Even the modest Morgan Library bought and renovated an adjacent house and added a modern garden court. Now The Museum of Modern Art is ardently seeking an off-site facility for oversized and contemporary art, The Museum of the City of New York is commencing a five-year $33-million project that will add a 75,000-sf. wing (James Stewart Polshek) to its Museum Mile building at 102nd Street, and the Serge Sabarsky Foundation has announced plans to create a museum of Austrian and German Expressionist Art in a Fifth Avenue mansion at 86th Street. The Museum of American Folk Art still hopes to convert a row of West 53rd Street brownstones into a museum and residential tower, and The Whitney Museum is reconsidering its shelved expansion scheme (Michael Graves).

As the nation's cultural capital, New York may seem exceptional, but the situation is not so different elsewhere. In Washington, for example, the Holocaust Memorial Museum opened to acclaim last year, the Museum of the American Indian is planned for the last slot on the Capitol Mall, and the National African-American Museum will soon take over the Smithsonian's old Science & Industries building. On the West Coast, San Francisco has a second arts neighborhood that embraces the rising San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Yerba Buena Gardens Center for the Arts, the Mexican Museum, Jewish Museum, California Historical Society, Ansel Adams Photography Gallery, and a variety of other arts institutions, all in a roughly 12-block area South of Market Street. Indeed, there are huge projects all over, such as the new Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, and in a league of its own, the Getty Center in Brentwood, California. Capacious new wings are sprouting across the country, attached to museums in Baltimore, Birmingham, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New Orleans, Omaha, Phoenix, San Diego, and elsewhere. And university's are keeping up a frenzied pace, with lavish new art facilities at Emory, Vassar, Wellesley, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Kansas City Art Institute, and the universities of Minnesota, Washington, and Wyoming.

Critics insist the expansions are unnecessary and even irresponsible. Scarce moneys and personnel might spend time improving the collections and their presentation, rather than endlessly fundraising. After all, does the public need yet another rehash of the late-modern and contemporary "canon" -- the obligatory Kline, Kelly, and Koons? Proponents argue that space is needed to contain growing collections of increasingly large-scale contemporary art, to host important traveling shows, and present the collections so as to better serve and educate a growing audience. Moreover, they point to the fact that nearly all expansions now include revenue-generating amenities such as gift and book shops, cafes and restaurants, film theaters and lecture halls, and leasing facilities for receptions and other catered events. And having found out the hard way that big buildings are expensive to operate, museums now raise endowment during their capital campaigns.

Still, it is a peculiar logic by which the museums seem to operate. With government and private funding diminished by the recessionary economy, one would expect them to go into hibernation. Instead, they are determined to boost revenues through increased attendance. Heavily hyped shows are crowdpleasers, hence the need to build galleries for marketable blockbusters; art donations are down, thus the need to create empty walls to be filled; a low-fee architect would be more affordable, but most commission "name brand" firms deemed more likely to attract private money -- such as award winners Edward Larrabee Barnes, Mario Botta, Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Arata Isozaki, Fumihiko Maki, Richard Meier, Rafael Moneo, Caesar Pelli, Renzo Piano, and Robert Venturi.

Another now-universal incentive to reluctant largesse is the plaque, or generically, the "naming opportunity." It seems impossible these days to add a doorknob without engraving the appellation of some patron seeking immortality via tax-exemption. Are there any college art museums left without an alumnae moniker? When entire buildings are unavailable or out of reach, in Brooklyn one can always "adopt-a-masterpiece" and at least get one's name on the adopted work's wall label. Or the frugal philanthropist can "sponsor-a-brick" of the Birmingham Museum of Art's sculpture terrace.

The trick, as ever, is to be able to sell the idea to empty-pocketed patrons and politicians. Institutions in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans have found a useful tool for extracting public funds is the economic impact survey which demonstrates the fiscal soundness of government investment in the arts. Museums in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Birmingham, North Miami, and LaJolla have discovered the readiness with which even scarce tax money is spent on urban renewal. As anchors for "redevelopment zones" or more tony "cultural districts" they have elicited otherwise inaccessible public moneys. Indeed, by one means or another, and for better or worse, U.S. museums find the funds to build. A survey of recent projects, their sponsorship, and their intended function appears in the adjacent chart.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©

[PART II: Project summaries -- omitted]