No trampoline needed for Manhattan now

It has been reported that architect Frank Gehry’s new Guggenheim Museum, intended for the harbour area in New York, is to go ahead in 2002 at a cost of $678 million. Yet another biomorphological (or phenological?) construct (again in titanium) was, at least before 11 September, in receipt of the city’s endorsement. The 40-storey high tower looming over a 1,200 seat auditorium, with a mall linking various separate ‘zones’ for each cultural activity group (architecture, design, new media and so on) and a clutch of restaurants would both dwarf the Fifth Avenue Wrightian original Guggenheim, and maybe look askance across at Ground Zero – memories are notoriously truncated by time. Surely now, apart from the key question of appropriateness (especially of the tower) the great fin-de-siecle wave of art museum building is seriously over, but for those who did not know it. By contrast, the beauty of Arata Isozaki’s mid-l980s MOCA in downtown Los Angeles, set down like a superbly faceted jewelbox in a canyon between high buildings, was increased by such a contrast. Perhaps the Guggenheim will now get the message at last. Italian ‘Arte Povera’ artist Giulio Paolini, is quoted in the Art Newspaper to say that ‘in many American cities, museums are perceived "as a trampoline from which a city can be launched into urban renewal"’ . Here, the trampoline is truly not now required.