I watched Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” last night for the first time since I moved to New York over ten years ago.  The opening, a montage of shadowy, black-and-white views of the city, is lovely, but this shot of the Guggenheim made me gasp.

It’s shockingly simple and conveys so much: the slight slope of the ramp as you’re walking it, the relaxed voyeurism of the open balconies, and the jewel-box feeling of the museum at night.  It’s the gentlest, least heroic image I’ve seen of the museum, and the one that I want to keep with me.

“If the inauguration of the Guggenheim Museum in New York was a formative moment in art museum starchitecture, then the 1997 Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao was its apotheosis.”

from ArtWrit.com

(Sketch of the Guggenheim Bilbao, Frank Gehry.)