Monumental museums.

Museum construction reached new heights at the end of the twentieth century. These buildings drew on diverse styling elements, ranging from the objects the museums were intended to house to the surrounding environment to history itself. Starting in the 1980s and carrying into the 1990s, Europe, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, the United States commissioned new architectural treasures to house artistic jewels. One of the most significant projects was American architect I. M. Pei's work for the Louvre in Paris, France. In the first phase, completed in 1989, Pei erected the famous modernistic glass pyramid as a new entrance amid the nineteenth-century architecture of the Cour Napoleon. The second phase, completed in 1993, encompassed the Richelieu wing. Pei, who was tapped for the project by French president Francois-Maurice Mitterrand, doubled the Louvre's exhibition space with his renovation of the three-story...