It would be better to reconsider this wholesale demolition. Especially as the proposed replacement, designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, leaves much to be desired. [...] Or maybe it’s the quintessential Angeleno building? After all, replacing an aging faithful spouse with a younger, more stylish trophy wife is an established Hollywood custom. — Zócalo Public Square

City boosters in this Nordic capital dream of a Guggenheim museum of Finnish wood rising near the Baltic Sea and one day drawing millions of tourists and cruise passengers. But the huge costs of the proposed development are stirring a backlash here against an institution that is ordinarily accustomed to eager suitors. — nytimes.com

"We're working with the other owners of the property and with Metro," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. "There's good reason to build a major development there. You've got subway access and density on Wilshire. My dream is some beautiful piece of architecture with an architecture and design museum at the base, which would add to Museum Row."

If built, the tower would offer a dramatic vertical complement to the relentlessly horizontal LACMA gallery building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor — latimes.com

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

The Russian architect Yuri Grigoryan, and his firm Project Meganom, have been chosen for the long-delayed 22bn ruble ($640m) expansion of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. The new design replaces a controversial proposal by the British architect Norman Foster that required the destruction of historic buildings, upsetting preservationists. Foster pulled out of the project last year. — theartnewspaper.com

This, if it is a harsh way to describe the British Museum's attempts to update itself over the last two decades, with the help of the most famous architects in the land and hundreds of millions in generous donations, nonetheless reflects what's going on. Like large cultural institutions everywhere, the museum finds itself dealing with similar pressures to those of commercial players in the fields of leisure and entertainment [...] and it reaches for similar solutions.. — theguardian.com

Architect Peter Zumthor has dramatically revised his design for a new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, creating a new bridge-like section of the building that would span Wilshire Boulevard.

The new design is meant to address concerns that the original plan would encroach on, and potentially damage, the La Brea Tar Pits at the neighboring Page Museum, casting a shadow over the largest pit. — latimes.com

About $570 million, or 94 percent, has been raised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for its 235,000-square-foot (21,800-square-meter) expansion and to add $245 million to the museum’s endowment. The $305 million wing designed by the Snohetta architecture firm is rising behind SFMOMA’s current home, opened two decades ago in the technology-heavy South of Market area, or SOMA. — bloomberg.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

Family-owned Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet have chosen BIG, HG Merz, Luchinger & Meyer, and Muller Illien as having the winning design for a new expansion of their headquarters in La Vallée de Joux, La Brassus, Switzerland. Adding quite the literal twist to the timeline concept, BIG's proposal -- titled Maison des Fondateurs -- dons a 25,000 ft. spiral-shaped museum that tells the centuries-long history of Audemars Piguet. — bustler.net

Downtown Los Angeles’s historic core is about to get its first major museum, if that’s what you want to call it. Local developer Tom Gilmore and architect Tom Wiscombe are teaming up on the complex project, which they are calling the Old Bank District Museum. It will be dedicated to contemporary Los Angeles art and located in the sub-basements, basements, ground floors, mezzanines, and roofs of three interconnected buildings along Main and Fourth streets. — archpaper.com

The flagship museum of the billionaire financier and art collector Eli Broad, still under construction, has filed a $19.8 million lawsuit against a German company for what it describes as delays in fabricating the building blocks for its unusual latticed facade. — nytimes.com

Jersey City-based art center Mana Contemporary—the exhibition branch of the Mana Fine Arts art storage, shipping, and packing empire—is building a street art museum in a former ice factory in Jersey City [...].

In addition to a rotating program of special exhibitions inside the institution, MMUA will boast specially-commissioned murals on its exterior walls, a large billboard where artists will create new works, and a full range of educational and community outreach programs. — news.artnet.com

By most measures, the museum, designed by Davis Brody Bond and Snøhetta, has met the difficult challenge of telling the emotionally charged story of 9/11 at Ground Zero. The gift shop, however, has detracted from the achievement, with tabloids and blogs lambasting the “darkness” hoodies, toy firetrucks, “survivor tree” earrings, and 9/11 cheese plate for sale in the gift shop. — businessweek.com

Many New Yorkers, still trying to make sense of the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center, have had a single question as a museum was being built at ground zero: Too soon?

Now that the 9/11 Memorial Museum, as it's officially called, has opened to the public, they and others may find themselves asking something else: Too much?

The museum is an overstuffed answer to the appealing minimalism of the 9/11 memorial and its cascading pools, which opened in 2011. — latimes.com