The British Museum in London, established by an act of Parliament in 1753 and opened to the public January 15, 1759, claims to be the world’s oldest structure built as a museum. For the next couple of centuries, museum buildings seemed to follow the same pattern—imposing, Greek Revival architectural monuments carved in stone, with symmetrical windows and doors.

Since then, museum design has evolved in dramatic fashion. With his hugely successful Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Frank Lloyd Wright turned museum design upside down—literally—with his rounded wide-at-the-top, narrow-at-the-bottom design completed in 1959, the year of his death. Rather than reinforcing the notion of gravity, as museums traditionally had done, it defied gravity. Round in both exterior and interior, it seemed to issue a challenge to the rectangular buildings that surrounded it.

Nonetheless, the Guggenheim, improved by the early 1990s Gwathmey-Siegel renovation and addition, remains one of the world’s most intriguing and visited structures.

Today, museum design is largely in the hands of architects whose headline-grabbing works and public relations skills have morphed them into "starchitects." Their bold designs often challenge the public to expand its understanding of the integration of architecture, art and urban development. All of today’s architects consider movement, intensity and vitality to be essential ingredients in successful contemporary design.

One of the most dynamic and artistically sited museums is the National Museum of Australia at Canberra, which opened in 2001. Designed by Howard Raggatt, it integrates the many stories of Australian culture, including the founding of Sydney by the British and the history of the indigenous Australians, such as the Aboriginals and the Torres Strait Islanders. Its location at Acton Peninsula on Lake Burley Griffin offers spectacular vistas and allows an approach to the museum’s entry through a now-iconic 30-meter-high sculptural loop. Splashes of color lend lightness, life and energy to this postmodern edifice.

Lightness in defiance of gravity is apparent in the expressionist Museo Oscar Niemeyer in Curitiba, in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná. Designed by its namesake, winner of the AIA Gold Medal (1970) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989), the museum was originally founded as the Novo Museu in 2002. It was renamed after the architect in 2003 to commemorate his 95th birthday during completion of the new addition. Museo Oscar Niemeyer appears to float in space, reinforced visually in several ways. It is built of a large volume shaped like an eye sitting atop a relatively small pedestal. This arrangement allows the surrounding sky and topography to be seen around the building in all dimensions. Although it is known as the "eye museum," it seems designed from a cross-section of an aircraft wing. This also adds lightness and a sense of impending takeoff to the composition.

Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is one of the most important integrations of art and architecture. Its bold design was a point of departure from traditional museum design in the same way that Wright’s Guggenheim was during the 1950s. It contains one spectacular permanent exhibit: "The Matter of Time," a series of weathering steel sculptures designed by Richard Serra and housed in the 430-foot Arcelor Gallery.