Architecture for Art's Sake
Atlantic, The, June, 2001 by Ann Wilson Lloyd
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I s it "the Bilbao effect"? After Frank Gehry's visually pyrotechnic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened its doors, in the fall of 1997, and saw more than 1.3 million visitors stream through them within a year, that museum was widely credited with having sparked an economic boom in northern Spain. Now its success seems to be a prime factor in igniting a building boom among art museums all across the United States.
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In the past four years at least forty American art institutions have announced, begun, or finished additions or new buildings, and a goodly proportion of these involve architecture as spectacle. Robert A. Ivy, the editor in chief of the journal Architectural Record , explains the phenomenon this way: "Gehry's Bilbao has conflated cultural, economic, and political interests, alerting all to what a dazzling object in the cityscape can accomplish." As might be expected, much noteworthy activity is occurring in ...
