Art Museum Architecture at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century: Iconic Buildings and "Starchitects"

The success of Frank O. Gehry's iconic design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain in 1997 triggered a trend for art museum directors and boards of trustees to hire high-profile architects to design elaborate new museum buildings for their institutions.  This paper presents case studies of three such building projects, all commissioned within the past 10 years: the Milwaukee Art Museum's Quadracci Pavilion designed by Santiago Calatrava in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati's Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art designed by Zaha Hadid in Cincinnati, Ohio; and the Bellevue Arts Museum designed by Steven Holl in Bellevue, Washington.  Unlike the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, however, each of the aforementioned museums endured functional or financial problems during the design, construction, or opening stages of their new buildings, igniting debate among arts professionals, architecture critics, and the general public about the planning, purpose, and accountability in museum building projects.  In response to this debate, this paper explores whether the three museums in question implemented responsible building projects that culminated in new museum structures that fulfill the missions of these institutions.