The Washington Post‘s art critic worries about the Diller + Scofidio bubble. Namely, that it will detract from the art:
Art museums ought to be about three things: Art. Art. And more art.
They should be so focused on gathering art together and showing it off that there’s barely time or room for anything else. That should be how a museum feels to visitors: The art on view should so dominate their experience that all the rest — the shop, the cafe, the lecture and event schedule, the wall texts and flashy digital “enhancements,” the architecture itself — should fade almost away. If a museum director wanders into his galleries and sees a bunch of people in them looking at a bunch of art (as on any normal day at the Hirshhorn) he should feel he’s 95 percent of the way there. Anything else is gravy, worth a passing thought but not a year’s worth of meetings and fundraisers. A museum should be more like a library for art than like a cineplex or college campus or shopping mall.
The Hirshhorn balloon expansion: Will art get squeezed out of the picture? (Washington Post)
