The New York Times today reported on a new study on over-zealous building campaigns at cultural institutions which mentioned the Chicago Art Institue’s Modern Wing, Dallas’ Winspear Opera House and the Long Center for Performing Arts in Austin as exemplars of institutional wishful thinking gone awry. The study, titled “Set in Stone” by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, studied 700 projects in the post-Bilbao boom era (1994-2008) and found that falure to realistically assess the need for a new building, overly optimistic revenue predictions (the crash), and ambitious architects anxious to get something built were common contributors to troubled projects.
Bilbao Boom: For Arts Institutions, Thinking Big Can Be Suicidal in NY Times
