There's no question that the construction of a major museum is a big deal. Often it involves acclaimed architects from all over the world competing for the right to design it; millions of public and/or private funds (or billions in the case of California's J. Paul Getty Museum); and time, patience, and more time. All the effort pays off in the end when the resulting structure dazzles the eye as it displays and protects art, inhabits its landscape with ease, and lures the curious and even the indifferent to explore its environs. Successes include Richard Meier's aforementioned Getty, a gleaming, alluring city on a hill, although it took fourteen years to complete and swallowed up a billion dollars; Frank O. Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, a stunning, otherworldly titanium-clad blob; and Norman Foster's spare, ethereal Carré d'Art... More >>>