“With more than $1 billion being raised for new museums and other arts facilities, Boston is in the midst of an unprecedented cultural boom, one that museum directors hope will elevate the city as a cultural mecca without overbuilding or saturating the market. The construction wave occurs a century after Boston’s major institutions — the Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — opened their current homes. This time, the projects are more varied, ranging from a contemporary art museum on the waterfront and downtown theaters to a pair of cultural centers slated for open space created by the Big Dig.”