Or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, which is still trying to get enough money together to make improvements proposed by Calatrava. You're talking about cathedrals. A. Well, the Glyptothek in Munich, erected by Prince Ludwig of Bavaria early in the 19th century, took 16 more years to finish than the prince had predicted. The J. Paul Getty Center, in Brentwood, Calif., opened a few years ago with far too few rest rooms for the crowds that turned up. Frank Lloyd Wright's original Guggenheim Museum in New York suffered from stringent budget cuts, resulting in a paucity of storage and conservation space.
Museum building is a tricky, costly business.
It's inherently risky. And no serious museum is ever, really, totally completed. And coverage in the major architectural press has already, I'm told, been lined up. Herbert Muschamp of The Times is no pushover. Nor is Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker.