Panel

The last few years have seen an enormous boom in museum building, acquisition, and expansion, for example the extension of the Guggenheim to a number of satellite museums, the fabulous new modern art museum in Bilbao, Spain, MoMA’s plans for expansion, the Holocaust Museums in New York and Washington, I.M. Pei’s monument to the ephemera of rock’n’roll in Cleveland, and Richard Meier’s breathtakingly beautiful and expensive new Getty Museum in L.A. How can we account for this sudden upsurge in interest in the museum, an institution pronounced moribund not too long ago? Do these developments signal some resurgence of cultural vitality? Or do they simply reflect the belated discovery by museum directors that culture sells and museums are a form of entertainment? If the latter, who is buying, what are they buying, and why? A panel of museum directors, architects, and critics examines the role of the museum in the world today.

Moderator
Edward Rothstein, New York Times cultural critic, Senior Fellow of the Vera List Center

Participants
Casey Blake, Columbia University, author of Beloved Community
Mildred Friedman, author of Gehry Talks: Architecture + Process, former curator, Walker Art Center
Diane Lewis, Professor of Architecture, Cooper Union
Mary Sweeney Price, Director of the Newark Museum