Is the gigantic new glass-and-brick entrance to the Brooklyn Museum a fitting frontispiece? If you attended the BL special "Culture Storm" at the Museum two weeks ago, you may have already formed an opinion.

If you haven't had time to go there yourself, why not adopt someone else's opinon? A listener called Quinton called in today and described the new facade as "seventies sci-fi glass bleachers". Francis Morrone, author of The Architectural Guidebook to New York City (and something of a traditionalist) said this:

"There was a consensus a few years ago that when we added to old buildings we should do so in like style... Nowadays, however, the consensus in the architectural world is that new additions should clash with the old building. That they shouldn't simply be in a modern style, but they should be brutally disjunctive. This is a phase we're going through."

for more opinion and a pic of the new facade: Gothamist

Posted by lehrer at 03:46 PM