The New Museum on the River

From the river, the new Museum of American Art looks like a ship about to leave: all glass, white stone, and impossible angles. Inside, the feeling continues — light pours down a central staircase, and the great windows keep pulling your eyes back to the water. As a piece of architecture, the building is a triumph, and the crowds on opening weekend clearly agreed: the line reached the bridge by ten o'clock.

The collection is strongest where you would hope. The first special exhibition, on American rivers, fills the top floor with maps, photographs, and one enormous steamboat wheel. The nineteenth-century landscapes glow in their high rooms, and the museum has wisely given its best space to American photographers, including a room of Depression-era portraits that visitors enter quietly and leave slowly. The contemporary floor is less sure of itself: two vast white rooms hold surprisingly little, and some pieces feel chosen for size rather than quality.

Practical matters are mixed. Tickets are reasonably priced and free for children, and the staff are excellent. The café, sadly, is disappointing: expensive sandwiches, slow service, and a view of the parking lot — the one window in the building that looks the wrong way. Arrive early, too; by midday the most popular rooms are crowded enough to turn looking into queuing.

None of this should keep you away. It is worth the trip across town. A museum that gets its building, its photographs, and its light this right has earned its audience. Go on a weekday morning, start with the photographers, and have lunch somewhere else. Four stars — and the fourth is for the staircase alone.