Museums and exhibition buildings have experienced an unparalleled boom in the last few years. It seems that hardly any city can afford not to have a spectacular new museum designed by a star architect. The ‘success’ of a Tate Modern in London, a MOMA in New York, or a Guggenheim in Bilbao sets the standards. If museums were once dedicated to be a cultural archive and to host exhibitions, they have now significantly taken over the function of tourist sites, of urban communication centres with a multiplicity of commercial agendas.