-By Michael Webb

Every week brings news of a new museum or the expansion of an established institution. Across America and around the world, the art museum has supplanted the cathedral as a showcase of civic pride, a social condenser, and a sanctum in which to feel uplifted. It has also become an economic engine. Thirty years ago, the Pompidou Center revitalized a decayed quarter of Paris, launched the careers of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, and immediately became a must-see spectacle that upstaged the content. Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim transformed the image of a decayed industrial city, lured millions of visitors, and reinforced the cult of stararchitects. The immense popularity of these two icons has provoked a feeding frenzy among clients, all hoping that the Bilbao effect will rub off on them.

Even the Louvre, a former royal palace, cast aside tradition in favor of I.M. Pei's glass pyramid, and its attendance has boomed. Museum boards are challenged to commission buildings that reflect the spirit of our times and balance a score of competing priorities. New structures need to stand out from the crowd in order to secure funding and win public attention. However, their architectural form should be determined from the inside out, putting art first but also encouraging visitors to gather, attend events, eat, and shop—activities that generate essential revenue. When show triumphs over substance, the art experience is diminished.

"Repetitive white boxes suck the life out of art; iconic buildings sometimes overpower it," observes Steven Holl, who found a third way when he extended the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City (see Contract, September 2007). He created an underground link between the existing Beaux Arts temple and a new linear wing of half-buried galleries that step down a grassy slope and are lit from translucent glass lanterns. Within, there are constant shifts of scale, level, and perspective to avert museum fatigue and focus attention on 20th-century paintings and sculpture. Galleries are accessed from a glass-walled concourse that links the enclosed galleries to the sweep of the garden.

Renzo Piano achieved a similar feat in the Zentrum Paul Klee, overlooking the Swiss capital of Berne. In his 35-year career, the Genoa-born architect has won acclaim for the subtlety of his spaces, and the De Menil Collection in Houston is often compared to Louis Kahn's Kimbell in Fort Worth, as an ideal art museum. The Klee Center is a monument that celebrates the work of a brilliant miniaturist; a fusion of architecture and landscape, warmth and precision, structural daring and welcoming interiors. Like so many of this master builder's works, it has a strong, simple diagram that masks the complexity of its construction. The undulating topography of three adjoining hills inspired the profile of the steel beams, which swoop and soar like a roller coaster, rising from the earth at the rear to a trio of imposing arches in front. Each rounded vault encloses a discrete set of spaces that are linked at the front by a 1,500-ft.-long glazed concourse containing the café, ticketing, shop, and reference area. Extended opening hours encourage visitors to come early or linger in this protected piazza.

A changing selection from the permanent collection is displayed in the central pavilion, with a temporary exhibition gallery below. The expansive display areas are divided by suspended flats into a benign labyrinth of interconnecting spaces. Each white screen hovers an inch above the oak floors as do the peripheral walls. To achieve the low lighting level these sensitive works require, the illumination is indirect and filtered. Piano's greatest achievement is to give these tiny, intense works the space they need to breathe. Such a concentration of invention could easily overwhelm the viewer; here, each work seems to float in its own white void, bathed in a cloud of soft light.

The Basel-based firm of Herzog & de Meuron has created a dozen exemplary museums, notably the De Young in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Its latest is Caixa Forum, across from the Prado in Madrid. As at the Tate Modern in London, a brick power station has been gutted to house galleries for contemporary art, but this project is smaller and more radical. To achieve an equilibrium of mass and lightness, and to create a shaded plaza, the architects removed the granite base of the landmark building. Steel trusses support the concrete-framed shell and the underside of the container is faced in chevrons of stainless steel that are faceted to catch the light. The handsomely restored brickwork of the old building is topped with pierced and rusted cast iron wrapped around the restaurant and administrative offices on the upper level.

Stainless-steel stairs spiral up to an open foyer. Slender fluorescent tubes are strung from an unfinished ceiling; cabinetry in the gift store and reception lounge is suspended above the steel-plated floor. This is a space created by artists for art: raw and flexible; a place to gather, to get oriented, or participate in an event. The second and third levels each comprise a single expansive gallery with white walls, oak floors, and linear light tracks alternating with plastered steel beams—neutral containers for every kind of art.

The recently completed Grand Rapids Art Museum also enhances the urbanity of its downtown site. It was designed by wHY Architects of Los Angeles, and design principal Kulapat Yantrasast was previously project architect for Tadao Ando's acclaimed Fort Worth Art Museum. GRAM is an airy, light-filled cluster of glass and impeccably poured concrete boxes, tied together with a boldly jutting canopy and crowned with a trio of glass lanterns.

There's an easy flow of space throughout the building and a seamless link between circulation and display areas. Each gallery is harmoniously proportioned and lit in a different way—most dramatically on the third floor, where you look up into the softly glowing lanterns and the inverted pyramid that crowns them as though they were James Turrell sky spaces. The cool light is warmed by the white oak of the floors, upper-level stairs, and cabinetry. Too many museums have begun to resemble malls; at GRAM, the café and retail area are set off to one side and have a separate identity, looking out to a side street, but the handsome, wood-lined auditorium is an extension of the lobby. The crisp elegance of the facades, the skilful balance of volumes, and the felicitous siting make GRAM a model of substance and style.