The Next Revolution Will be Locally Funded

Over the past decade, as the public has increasingly embraced the idea that food is best grown locally and sustainably, we’ve made the opposite assumption about our cultural institutions. Witness the “Bilbao effect,” recently declared all but dead in the New York Times. Smitten with the success of the Guggenheim’s outpost in Bilbao, Spain, we’ve come to believe that any city dissatisfied with its growth and tourist traffic need only follow a simple formula: Commission a big-name architect to design a bigger, flashier museum building, then wait for the tourists and tax dollars to come pouring in. And so we set to work turning culture into a cash crop, sowing boldface names and marble bricks like soybeans and corn.

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