I admired Muschamp’s writing and always enjoyed his personal and effusive style. On visiting Frank Gehry newly opened Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Muschamp had this to say in the New York Times. He was 59 years old and the cause of death was lung cancer.

After my first visit to the building, I went back to the hotel to
write notes. It was early evening and starting to rain. I took a break
to look out the window and saw a woman standing alone outside a bar
across the street. She was wearing a long, white dress with matching
white pumps, and she carried a pearlescent handbag. Was her date late?
Had she been stood up?

“When I looked back a bit later, she was
gone. And I asked myself, Why can’t a building capture a moment like
that? Then I realized that the reason I’d had that thought was that I’d
just come from such a building. And that the building I’d just come
from was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.”

"…What twins the actress and the building in my memory is that both of
them stand for an American style of freedom. That style is voluptuous,
emotional, intuitive and exhibitionist. It is mobile, fluid, material,
mercurial, fearless, radiant and as fragile as a newborn child. It
can’t resist doing a dance with all the voices that say ‘No.’ It wants
to take up a lot of space. And when the impulse strikes, it likes to
let its dress fly up in the air.”

RT