Guggenheim Forums Launch Today

Both Art Daily and The Moment (a New York Times blog we're very fond of) have articles about the Guggenheim Museum's launch of a series of online forums that will allow for live chats with experts and submission of visitor comments on a number of topics. The inaugural series, which begins today, focuses on the museum's celebration of Frank Lloyd Wright's work, Between the Over- and Underdesigned, on the 50th anniversary of its iconic building in New York. Curator Aric Chen is already asking some great questions:

Taking us into the present, when we in much of the world are coming down (or at least taking a pause) from one of the biggest design binges in memory—from our love affair with megaprojects, iconic architecture, and designer, well, everything—has there been a disconnect between intention and effect? Has design, which has been championed in a way perhaps not seen since Wright’s era as a vehicle for social and environmental good, a wellspring of innovation, a driver of economies, a mover of product, a shaper of cities and, yes, a means of expression, become so omnipresent as to verge on oppressive? Are we overdesigning our homes, our cities, ourselves? Or are we not designing them enough? Are we simply misguided in how we design—or are we doing a fine enough job as it is?

This kind of connectedness is, even more than searching for things, what the Internet is for.