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AS FAST AS THE VALUE of a van Gogh painting accelerates, that's how quickly expectations for the expansion of the Brooklyn Museum seem to be growing.
There are many people who are under the impression that there is only one monolithic art museum in the New York area - the celebrated Metropolitan in Manhattan. In fact, the Brooklyn Museum is considered to have one of the 10 best general art collections in the nation, and in any other community it would be a hot draw.
Instead, the people who run the museum are taking the drastic steps they believe are needed to bring the overstuffed, but underappreciated cultural repository out of the shadow of the Met.
Just last year, the Brooklyn's director, Bob Buck, estimated it would cost in the $50 million to $100 million range for the museum to undergo the glamor treatment - a total face-lift and a generous expansion.
By last month, the price tag had reached $220 million. That's how expectations have grown.
The key to the success of the project rests with Buck himself, the museum's mercurial, driven maestro. He is well known in the microcircles of museum people for a flashing temper, a smooth charm and a devotion to contemporary art. However, considering the astonishing scope of the project he has undertaken, he is surprisingly anonymous in the New York area.
Trustees have long hoped the museum could duplicate the achievement of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which exploited its geographical and psychological distance from Manhattan to establish itself as an artistic outlaw, the hot new place for avant-garde performers and audiences.
With that mission in mind, Bob Buck - with his contemporary art credentials and a taste for "daring" shows - was a perfect fit for the museum directorship. He believes that new art will attract new patrons, young collectors who have seedling fortunes but lack the clout to be crucial players at the Met...