Jan Freeman writes The Word column for Ideas.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia
producer.
Christopher Shea writes the Critical Faculties column for Ideas.
 Send the Brainiac bloggers a
comment on a post.
  Week of:
November 11
Week of:
November 4
Week of:
October 28
Week of:
October 21
Week of:
October 14
Week of:
October 7
Mind the gap
Shop talk What he learned in the newsroom Mr. Boffo lays an eggcorn Curse of the mummy's tummy More in Word Watch  |
« A tree falls in Brooklyn | Main | Bonobos are back! (In print) » Thursday, August 9, 2007An echo in AkronAccording to the latest issue of Metropolis, the architecture and design magazine, there's one advantage to running a small museum in flyover country: You don't have the weight of history and tradition (in the crusty, uncreative sense) bearing down on you when you make big changes. The overseers of the Akron Art Museum, for example, found the recent tastefully modernist expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, a bit ... dull. They wanted their own addition, which opened last month, to be "a direct challenge" to that that kind of conservatism, according to reporter Steven Litt [subscribers only]. The resulting structure, featuring a luminous cantilevered structure dubbed the Roof Cloud, is indeed striking. It's also the "first public building in North America by the experimental Viennese architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au [sic]."  Nice. Still, the addition doesn't seem entirely groundbreaking. Some of the basic forms and gestures even faintly echo another new art museum -- one built, no less, in a city known both for architectural stodginess and an over-reverence for "tradition."  Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:07 PM
|
