Once Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim Museum, the genie was out of the bottle. Museum architecture could and would never be the same again. The places we keep our art treasures had to stop looking like mausoleums, bank vaults, and imitations of neoclassical forms as translated by 19th century interpreters.
No, once the Guggenheim existed, the East Wing of the National Gallery could exist and now, among the growing list of the children and grandchildren of Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Libeskind’s new addition for the Denver Art Museum can take its place alongside its brothers and sisters.