Posted on 09/19/2026 5:02:11 AM PDT by MtnClimber
“If American architects wanted to ride the wave, rather than be wiped out by it, they had first to comprehend one thing: the client no longer counted for anything except the funding.” —Tom Wolfe
Apologies for very late posting this month. Reasons? No good one, really. Sorry.
Behold, the new Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. . . say, what. . . ? Yes, there is something about the Guggenheim Foundation, or enterprise, or entity, or whatever it is, that is causing the museum to replicate itself all over the world. It begins to resemble something like “Ice Nine,” the mysterious self-replicating, Earth-destroying substance in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle.
And so now there is a Guggie in Abu Dhabi, of all places, not exactly a bulwark of Western Civ — but the capital of the uber-wealthy United Arab Emirates. There was nothing much there in the blazing sands before the mid-20th century, but after striking oil. . . well, you know how that works. And with those nouveau riche circumstances comes a certain obligation to strive for status, which is where the art comes in.
The building itself was designed by the late Frank Gehry, our artiest architect. It is described by Artnet as a “dynamic, layered exterior composed of nine metallic cones.” The architect himself put it this way before he passed away in 2023: “I was looking for a way to express the times we lived in. . . . Our time is full of movement and change, and this building was the first curvy use of those ideas.”
Ah, yes. Of our time. Gotta do what is being done, and that’s what is being done. And when you get it done for the $1-billion price tag, you will surely have a one-of-a-kind status totem to brag on. (And Frank’s estate gets a real nice commission.)
Among the featured artists will be bygone American art-stars Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. One strains to imagine what the average denizen of Abu Dhabi will make of their works, tied, as they are so symbolically, to the grubby 20th century sub-culture of the downtown Manhattan scene. But whatever else the art represents, it sure costs a lot.
As for the look of the museum itself. Well, kind of looks like a construction site where the various building materials were piled-up upon delivery, before construction even started. Frank Gehry was renowned as a prankster. Hope the Iranians don’t blow it up.
Thanks to Justin J. Perrault for the nomination!
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Eyesore of the month ping
Frank’s designs are defect laden. They leak and self destruct.
It looks like a spaceship crashed into the desert.
Mid-century Sanford and Son design.
Howard Roarke says pretty much the same thing in The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's paean to individualism in architecture, among other things.
Good point
Some architects’ vision is an abomination.
Always fun having to play fetective for who is at fault when things like this happen.
Perfect
Bad night in concrete.
There is something seriously wrong with one that designs such fugliness.
And there is something much more seriously wrong with one who pays to have it built.
Now, given those two fundamental truths of the multiverse, let us consider the abortion of the Dorkbama Library.
Is there something about New York that corrupts the internals of all who liver there? (Er, live there.)
TRAIN WRECK, LOL! You nailed it!🙂
You’re right, it looks like he was trying to recreate the Roswell incident.
I've seen worse.
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