In the heart of downtown Aspen, Colorado, the new Aspen Art Museum already has a busy itinerary of festivities — from an award ceremony to the official ribbon-cutting this past weekend -- even before its public opening this Saturday, August 9. Surrounded by Aspen's mountainous landscape, the new 33,000 sq.ft building designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Shigeru Ban includes a rooftop sculpture garden and 17,500 square feet of new exhibition space. — bustler.net

After 14 years of talking, of battles, and of construction, and in one of the more ambitious reimaginings of a regional museum ever, the art-rich Clark has opened a new building, plopped a lake behind it and expanded to a 140-acre campus.

It opens July 4, and it is magnificent—mostly—but we’ll get to that. — news.artnet.com

Switzerland’s two largest art museums are building extensions, although Basel is moving faster than its neighbour and sometimes rival, Zürich. In Basel, construction is proceeding apace on the Kunstmuseum’s project, across the street from the original museum. [...]

Meanwhile Zürich’s Kunsthaus has become embroiled in a dispute which has halted work this month. The Swiss environmental group Archicultura is objecting, and permission to build is being withheld by a canton court. — theartnewspaper.com

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will soon debut Making a Classic Modern: Frank Gehry’s Master Plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an exhibition showcasing the first images of Frank Gehry's master plan to renovate the museum. The exhibition will also feature large-scale models, site plans, sections, and renderings. The exhibition opens July 1 through September 1 at the Dorrance Galleries. — bustler.net

MVRDV has the winning proposal to design the Collection Building for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The bowl-like public art depot will let the public see the ins and outs of the museum's daily activities, and also let private art collectors store their own collections in ideal museum conditions. Completion of the project is expected in 2017. — bustler.net

“I always remember the Calder show at the Guggenheim in New York,” Gehry told LA Confidential, “and how the work responded to the curves of the museum. It was spectacular. LACMA didn’t have such a space for the show, so we designed one. I hope to at least give the art its individual space and let the architecture help reveal the dynamism of each piece.” — phaidon.com

The new Pérez Art Museum that opened here last week embodies a vernacular style—deep-shaded, loose-limbed and connected to the tropics—that should have been but never was because of those two invasive species, Art Deco and the air conditioner. — online.wsj.com

Miami’s new art museum, the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), opens on December 4th. The subtle building, designed by the Basel architecture firm, Herzog & de Meuron, isn't exactly what you'd expect from a city that produced the Mediterranean Revival, Art Deco, Morris Lapidus, and Arquitectonica. — metropolismag.com

The Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron went tropical to design an alluring home for a museum long stifled by a bad building in an unfortunate location. The Perez now has a shot at establishing itself as a major destination. — bloomberg.com

“It has long been our goal to ensure that the contemporary artworks in the Broad collections are seen by the broadest possible public,” said Eli Broad. “We believe that free general admission to The Broad will help draw visitors to all of the cultural institutions along Grand Avenue.”

Hard by the Yangtze River, ten miles from Nanjing, a giant, glowing hollowed-out trapezoid hovers above the trees. The otherworldly Sifang Art Museum, designed by the American architect Steven Holl, [...] an edgy sign of the ancient city’s rapid modernization. — smithsonianmag.com

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on Wednesday finally abandoned its long-planned project to cover the museum’s interior courtyard in Washington D.C. with a distinctive, temporary inflatable bubble.

Citing financial uncertainties, Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian Institution’s under secretary for history, art and culture, made the announcement. He said outgoing director Richard Koshalek, who resigned last month after failing to receive full support for the bubble... — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

"Bracingly forward-looking, Zumthor's design for LACMA would give the city a much-needed jolt of architectural energy." — Los Angeles Times

Jeffrey Johnson, an architect who runs the China Megacities Lab at Columbia, is among a number of scholars who study China's rapid urbanization. He says local governments are building museums to create a cultural life and competitive identity for their cities.

But China lost a lot of art because of its civil war in the 1940s, as well as the Cultural Revolution, looting and overseas sales. Johnson says many museums are going up faster than curators can fill them with works and audiences. — npr.org

The highly anticipated expansion to the Kimbell Art Museum, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and Kendall/Heaton Associates, opens to the public on Wednesday, November 27, 2013.

Renzo Piano’s colonnaded pavilion stands as an expression of simplicity—glass, concrete and wood—surrounded by elms and red oaks, some 65 yards to the west of Louis I. Kahn’s vaulted, luminous museum of 1972.