Behind every good building...

A story from the local Hearst paper:

Adieu to Bellevue Art Museum

The Bellevue (Washington) Art Museum is closing, foiled by a combination of a tough economy, white-elephant architecture and a failure to find an audience.

The architectural community gave Stephen Holl's building a solid thumbs-up, but the visual arts community was considerably less impressed. In essence, the building is full of personality and high style, yet it is a difficult place to display art.

Jirsa, the museum spokeswoman, disagreed. "I think we were clear, but maybe the direction we gave him hasn't worked as well as we wanted."

What's particularly interesting about the story is that the key "money quote" from the same paper's architectural critic which appeared in print between the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs above --- a scathing but plausible judgment which condemned the Museum's Board for being "clueless" in how to control a starchitect like Holl --- is now missing from the story as it appears on-line.

Here is what's been pulled from the on-line version:

Architectural critic Sheri Olson blames the museum for its bad building. "Stephen Hall had a clueless client," she said. "The museum failed to articulate what it wanted, and this strong-willed architect created a space that interested him."

It's a pretty significant quote with long-term policy implications for the importance of the client in creating a good building; it's particularly significant for public agencies and NGOs which spend their construction dollars without the clear criterion of a return-on-investment.

One question: Does the Museum Board knows how to control it's local newspaper, if not its architect?

UPDATE: The critic now claims that "that's not what I said" and the paper will print a correction tomorrow.

CODA: For what it's worth, I don't think Holl designed a bad building from an urbanistic perspective. It's a bit striving and pretentious but it meets the Three Rules and is well-within what one would call the "business-judgment" rule in another context.

Lacking the expertise, I wouldn't dare to judge it as a showcase for art. But it does reignite the question about whether a building which attempts to be a work of "art" in itself can possibly succeed if it fails in its primary function of showing art. You can guess how I stand on this one.