Everybody Wants A Bilbao

Frank Gehry will unveil his plans for the Art Gallery of Ontario this week, and the pressure is mounting. “Unlike any of Gehry’s other projects, the Art Gallery of Ontario is a two-headed client: There’s AGO director Matthew Teitelbaum and then there’s the publishing magnate Kenneth Thomson, who has donated not only his massive collection of art but also $70-million in cash to a reinvented art gallery. Added to the froth is a residual expectation that maybe, if everybody tries a little harder, $200-million — the estimated budget for the project — will buy the architectural ecstasy of Bilbao.”