Defining moment for Corcoran

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This week's decision by the Corcoran Gallery of Art's Board of Trustees to shelve its Frank Gehry-designed addition was no surprise. Drumming up enough funds to pay for the ambitious Gehry addition -- estimated to cost about $180 million -- hardly seemed likely, especially after September 11 and the dot-com collapse dried up the springs of cultural philanthropy.

Now the Corcoran trustees face the tough task of finding ways to shore up the financially troubled institution and attract visitors to the aging beaux-arts building on 17th Street. They should start by dropping the pretense that the expensive Gehry project eventually will be constructed.

Then the board should concentrate on solving the real problem confronting the institution.

The Corcoran is suffering an identity crisis.

Visitors flock to other Washington art museums with a clear understanding of what those institutions have to offer. They know the Phillips Collection houses impressionist paintings in an intimate setting, the Renwick Gallery specializes in crafts, the National Gallery is filled with old masters.

The Corcoran lacks such curatorial definition. Its core collection of 19th-century American art is displayed in a grand old building, but so are those of the Smithsonian's larger American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery.

The 17th Street museum frequently shows contemporary works, but so does the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

One of the Corcoran's distinctions -- and one of its difficulties -- is that it is the oldest and largest private, admission-charging museum in a city filled with free public institutions. It must compete with larger entities for funds from the same individuals, foundations and corporations that have become hesitant to bankroll culture, given their own dwindling portfolios and profits. That makes the need for a clear identity at the Corcoran even more important.

Corcoran President and Director David C. Levy, who resigned effective Monday, intended for the Gehry addition to do that. Its exciting, undulating architecture, Mr. Levy figured, would create a new, more visible profile. He hoped to repeat the "Bilbao effect," attracting throngs of art and architecture lovers to the Washington institution just as Mr. Gehry's titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum has done in the Basque city.

But well-mannered, museum-filled Washington is not gritty Bilbao, a former steel town with few established cultural institutions. The idea of relying on a new wing squeezed between two buildings, hardly on the scale of Mr. Gehry's free-standing Guggenheim, to create a revenue-generating magnet always seemed dubious.