First up is the New Acropolis Museum (newacropolismuseum.gr) in Makriyianni, Athens. The work of architect Bernard Tschumi, this classically informed if utterly modern, concrete, marble and glass structure, should have opened in time for the 2004 Olympics, but 104 court cases and the threat of earthquake held up the build. It is set to open fully this month. In the meantime, there’s a temporary ground-floor exhibition of part of its collection of 4,000-plus antiquities and below the glass-floored lobby lies an archeological site that reveals the city as it was in AD600, its shops, houses and baths clearly outlined. Controversially, the top-floor gallery displays plaster casts of the Elgin Marbles, on view in London’s British Museum since 1832, as the campaign continues for their restitution.
Further east, in Qatar, the Museum of Islamic Art (heritageofqatar.org) in another striking building, designed by the Chinese/American architect IM Pei, is a sort of Art Deco ziggurat located on an artificial island near Doha. For the past decade, the Qatari royal family have buoyed the international art market, spending millions of dollars on artefacts that will form the basis of the collection, which includes Mughal and Persian miniatures, Samarkand silk carpets and a tenth-century astrolabe from what is now Iraq. The full collection will be officially inaugurated on 22 November.
There are a number of new galleries in North America. Toronto-born starchitect Frank Gehry has finally designed a building in his hometown: a slightly tamer-than-typical £125m extension to the Art Gallery of Ontario (ago.net), made from glass, wood and – inevitably – titanium, which will boost the gallery’s exhibition space by almost half when it opens on 14 November.
Forty miles from Boston, the Rhode Island School of Design (risd.edu) has just opened the Chace Center, a £17m extension to its Museum of Art, designed by Pritzker Prize-winner José Rafael Moneo to house work by its students and exhibitions to complement its main international collection.
Also accessible from Boston, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (clarkart.edu) in the Berkshires houses a remarkable private collection of European and American paintings, from the 15th to 20th centuries. It has just opened the Stone Hill Center, the first phase of a two-part extension to its campus by another Pritzker laureate Tadao Ando. A cluster of low-lying, linear structures will combine not just extended gallery space, a restaurant, café and shop, but a one and a half acre reflecting pool that becomes an ice rink in winter.
