Its overlapping forms seem inspired by Futurist sculpture, conveying a sense of centripetal motion, like an arrested implosion of the Tower of Babel. It is like nothing we have seen before. The interior is equally exhilarating, with catwalks crisscrossing the soaring atrium, whose space slips and slides up undulating white walls and glass-covered elevator towers to a height of 165 feet. To walk through the building is to experience a constant unfolding of interesting vistas, which has led some to declare that the museum is a more compelling work of art than many of those artworks which it contains. The architect, a friend of several of the artists whose work is exhibited inside, thinks not.
Artists say they're tired of that.
To be sure, he has delivered that. Almost half of the 250,000 square feet is devoted to galleries, but some say the free-form peculiarities of the design pose an obstacle to display. Indeed, at first glance form follows fancy rather than function. Yet, notwithstanding its radical idiosyncracies and apparent disorder, the building serves superbly as a showcase for art. Ten of the nineteen galleries are white cubes of the sort that have become familiar in the modern museum era.