If You Build It, Will They Come?

NEW YORK—Many architecture critics have noted that the spiky peaks of the Denver Art Museum's bold new Daniel Libeskind-designed addition jut into the sky like the nearby Rocky Mountains. Other cultural observers, however, might see in the sharp points of the Frederic C. Hamilton building an altogether different metaphor-that of a museum sticking its chin out.

DAM spent $110 million to construct the wing, which opened last October, and talked of attracting 1 million visitors in its first year of operation. But not everyone is quite so optimistic. Marc Wilson, the outspoken longtime director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, which unveiled a Steven Holl-designed addition to its 1933 building last month, deems the goal "crazy."

Such doubts come as news to Lewis Sharp, the Denver museum's khaki-clad and somewhat rumpled director. Sitting for an interview on a spring day, Sharp pushes back from the table in his new conference room, narrows his eyes, and asks who's saying these horrible things. He admits that last winter's severe snowstorms pared around 40,000 from expected visitor rolls and, when pressed further, concedes that "revenue production in the first months is less than I wanted." But he insists the museum is on track to meet its more modest projection of 750,000 visitors in the first year, which prompts his press officer to break in and deny they ever really promised more. (The museum's corporate partners program brochure, which sits on a credenza just inches away, declares otherwise: "We anticipate more than 1 million visitors in its first year of operation.")

Denver isn't the only city that has pinned high cultural hopes on new construction. Atlanta has jumped on the same bandwagon. So have Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Raleigh, Seattle—and the list goes on to include smaller cities like Akron, Roanoke, Grand Rapids, Davenport, Mobile, and Salem, Mass. For the past decade, art museums across the United States have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand, often in splashy starchitect-designed "signature buildings," Guggenheim Bilbao wannabes that are expected to draw huge crowds—especially more tourists. "This is an unprecedented period in the history of art museums," says Dan Monroe, executive director of the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, which opened its new 110,000-square-foot wing, designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, in 2003.

The boom has produced a wave of euphoria, not least among the donors who've made it possible. "When I saw the building, I was over the top with the outcome," says Denver oilman Frederic C. Hamilton, who put up $20 million for the DAM project. Similarly enthusiastic is John Wieland, whose name, along with that of his wife, Susan, adorns the largest of three new structures designed by Genoa-based architect Renzo Piano for the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta: "I'm ecstatic about the building," he declares.

But the splurge has raised a vexing question: Have museums created a virtuous circle, leading to greater patronage and a true golden age, or a vicious one, ending in empty galleries and gallons of red ink? "There've been so many museum expansions in the past 10 years that they can't all have the desired impact," says Russell Bowman, a Chicago-based art consultant. He should know. During his 17-year tenure as director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Bowman commissioned its soaring Santiago Calatrava wing, which opened in 2001. That $121 million project cost $25 million more than originally envisioned, doubled MAM's $6 million operating budget, and forced a couple of years of retrenchment. Bowman left his post in 2002; the museum's current strategic plan says starkly, "We remain underresourced."

The Denver museum, too, is now operating at a loss after decades with a balanced budget. In early April, Sharp announced layoffs and other cost-cutting measures.

Yet the pace of construction continues. "I'm on the Cincinnati Art Museum board, among others, and I don't know anyone who's not expanding," says Lois Rosenthal, who with her husband, Richard, donated the naming gift for Zaha Hadid's $34 million Contemporary Arts Center, which opened in Cincinnati in 2003. "It's pretty frightening. I don't know where all the money is that's going to pay for it."