In The Voices of Silence (1952), André Malraux speculated that advances in photography and printing were on the brink of ushering in the age of “the museum without walls,” putting at our fingertips resources that would “carry infinitely farther that revelation of the world of art … which the ‘real’ museums offer within their walls.”

Yes, well. It has turned out, of course, that walls are the one thing museums cannot get enough of. Everywhere one looks, museums are engaged in “ambitious” (i.e., huge and expensive) expansions. This is especially true of that vaguely oxymoronic phenomenon, the museum of contemporary art. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—what might be more accurately called the Guggenheim Consortium—was a pioneer in this dubious development. Under the entrepreneurial directorship of Thomas Krens, the museum did not simply expand, it went global, consigning its permanen ...

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