The Washingtonian said it shouldn't be built. The gallery's East Building is now considered a triumph, and members of the American Association of Architects have voted it one of the best buildings of all time.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's important for people who criticise architects - whether what they build is or isn't to your taste - to appreciate how they devote themselves and put everything into bringing a building into existence.
A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.
It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.
There are a lot of questions about whether architecture is art. The people who ask that think pretty tract houses are architecture. But that doesn't hold up.
If a building becomes architecture, then it is art.
I don't see that any buildings should be excluded from the term architecture, as long as they are done properly.
If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.
There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.
It was my father's hope, and it is ours, that the National Gallery would become not a static but a living institution, growing in usefulness and importance to artists, scholars and the general public.
Everyone should be able to build, and as long as this freedom to build does not exist, the present-day planned architecture cannot be considered art at all.