A New Brooklyn Museum: The Master Plan Competition

A dictum followed by The Brooklyn Museum's founders in 1893 when they sponsored an architectural competition to determine a design for a museum building still holds true today: the facilities that house great public art collections should be glorious symbols of civic pride. In considering how to expand the building that resulted from that competition in order to accommodate the growth in the Museum's collections experienced during the twentieth century, the Museum's Board of Trustees wanted to rekindle the spirit of that age. To this end, on March 4, 1986, the Board held a special session at which it elected to sponsor an international invitational competition to produce a master plan to guide the Museum's reorganization and growth into the next century. By editor Joan Darragh, foreword by Robert T. Buck, and introduction by Reyner Banham.