Ikea, the home furnishings store of choice for college dorms and bachelor pads around the world, is creating a new museum that is expected to open in the fall of 2015. The company will turn its first store in Älmhult, Sweden into a museum that will provide visitors with a survey of its history. — latimes.com

After a decade marked by deep grief, partisan rancor, war, financial boondoggles and inundation from Hurricane Sandy, the National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero is finally opening ceremonially on Thursday, with President Obama present, and officially to the public next Wednesday. It delivers a gut-punch experience — though if ever a new museum had looked, right along, like a disaster in the making, this one did, beginning with its trifurcated identity. — nytimes.com

If Brougher and other academy leaders can compel the architects to reconcile the clear potential of the new wing's interior spaces with its unconvincing, unwieldy exterior, they may be able to salvage the design before construction begins.

If not, they may well have an architectural flop on their hands when the museum opens in 2017 — not to mention the third disappointing Piano building within a quarter-mile radius. — latimes.com

The long-delayed 9/11 Memorial Museum will open to the public on May 21, after a six-day preview period during which it will be open round-the-clock for people directly affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including victims’ family members, first responders, and lower Manhattan residents. [...]

The museum, designed by the New York-based architecture firm Davis Brody Bond, was constructed around the largest, monumental artifacts [...]. — blogs.wsj.com

On April 19 there will be a groundbreaking near Southern Illinois University to celebrate the restoration and preservation of the world’s first geodesic dome home, originally built by Buckminster Fuller and his wife, Lady Anne, in 1960.

The ceremony at the Fuller Dome Home in Carbondale will be open to the public, free of charge, and will include a tour and the opportunity to view rare artifacts. — upi.com

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has chosen the firm of architect Annabelle Selldorf to head a multimillion-dollar expansion that is expected to triple the size of the museum's location in La Jolla.

Selldorf, based in New York, has worked for art-related clients including the Neue Galerie and the Acquavella Galleries on the Upper East Side. The San Diego museum will be the firm's first contemporary art museum project and its first project on the West Coast. — latimes.com

London's Natural History Museum recently revealed five shortlisted teams that still have a chance to redesign the historic museum in the Civic Realm competition...Teams will present their designs to the jury on March 13, and the winner is expected to be announced in April 2014. Designs are currently on exhibition -- with team names hidden -- at the Museum until March 11. — bustler.net

Can a museum collect architecture?

The answer, say the curators of Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture, is yes.

Though it won’t open its doors until 2017, M+ has already staged a number of exhibitions across the city, from 2012’s multi-site “Yau Ma Tei” to last year’s “Inflation!,” a collection of inflatable sculptures displayed on the grounds of its future home, the West Kowloon Cultural District. — blogs.wsj.com

When it comes to museums, Hiroshi Sugimoto doesn’t mince words.

“This is the worst space I ever encountered,” he told the Journal before opening a retrospective of his work at Seoul’s Leeum Samsung Museum of Art late last year. The Japanese artist was especially unhappy about a steep escalator leading down into the main gallery space of the OMA-designed building. “Why do that? It’s terrible,” he lamented. “I feel a kind of bad will from this architect.” — blogs.wsj.com

Christmas came early for Heneghan Peng Architects: the Irish firm was announced on December 23 as the final winner of the international competiton for Moscow’s new National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA). — 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