Starchitect Richard Meier has brought modernism to historic Rome, and apparently, the results are lacking. Meier's Ara Pacis Museum, which opened last week, is the first large-scale civic building to be constructed in the city's center in more than 50 years. New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wasted no time in calling the project "a flop," arguing that Meier's glass-and-grid creation overlooking the Tiber is as blind to its surroundings as the Fascist-era piazza in which it is situated. "That kind of insensitivity," writes Ouroussoff, "tends to reinforce the cliché that all contemporary architecture is an expression of an architect's self-importance."