Story and photo by DCist contributor Alexa Steinberg.

The creation and recreation of art museums is a tricky enterprise. The Museum of Modern Art’s recent $425 million dollar renovation has been subject to a lot of criticism and its expense has been questioned. The Guggenheim in Bilbao, considered an architectural masterpiece, has, for so large a structure, relatively little wallspace for art, and the art on display is often drowned out by the building’s architecture.

The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum appear to have learned from their predecessors. While their renovation has taken much longer than MoMA’s (five and half years to MoMA’s two), an early press tour yesterday of the building that will house the two museums – replete with hard hat and goggles – revealed that they have figured out how to spend less ($298 million), and work with their existing structure to much greater success.