Three Museums

In April, the $105 million, Selldorf Architects–designed expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego opened to acclaim. I visited shortly after and was struck by the feeling of an institution trying, awkwardly, to transition from a small museum to a larger, more multipurpose one. I trekked down corridor after corridor, looking for the art but more often finding locked doors.

Almost from its founding, New York’s Museum of Modern Art has been the protagonist of a high-stakes real-estate story, with variable results for the art. Monet’s Water Lilies feels like it’s in the attic of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s 2019 addition. Each successive land grab further dilutes the complex’s best parts, such as the sculpture garden that surfaces briefly in between growth spurts.

Contemplating these expansions, I can’t help but recall a visit to the Everson Art Museum, an early I. M. Pei Brutalist box in Syracuse. At 60,000 square feet, the museum is the perfect size. The circulation is simple enough: a sculptural stair leading to a second-floor necklace of shoebox galleries separated by spans of Pei’s pleasing corduroy concrete. You could see it in an afternoon.