Although Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum is the original art-museum-as-instant-architectural-icon, the modern reincarnation of this idea was the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which opened in 1977. Its fussy and impractical High Tech style had little impact on museum design, but one of its architects, Renzo Piano, has gone on to build many other museums, including the exceptional Menil Collection in Houston.* Another private Texas museum designed by Piano opened recently, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (at right). Simply conceived and beautifully built, it is restrained but not minimalist, and while the building defers to the works of art, it maintains a strong architectural presence. Piano does not have a trademark style, which may be why he is so much in demand (he is currently designing extensions to museum in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles). But his low-key approach would be severely tested by the Barnes collection, which demands more than a polite, albeit elegant, container.

*Correction, April 27, 2005: An earlier version of this piece mistakenly stated that the Menil Collection is in Dallas. It is in Houston.