Maxxi, The National Museum of 21st Century Art

CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images

Maxxi, The National Museum of 21st Century Art

Rome, Italy
After 11 years of design and construction, curators at Rome's new 130 million euro (about $175 million) contemporary art museum may now be wondering what art they'll install—and how they'll hang it—in Zaha Hadid's long, tubular gallery spaces, which overlap each other as they zoom around an old army barracks site like a frenzied highway project gone awry. Early viewers can't seem to get enough of Hadid's gravity-defying, frozen-motion theatricality, even as pundits declare the end of the era of architectural spectacle. Crisscrossed by deliciously squiggling stairways, will anyone be able to stop staring at the sinuous architecture long enough to find the art?