NEW YORK (AP) -- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is getting a facelift and among the most pressing dilemmas is what color to paint the building's exterior.
There's buff yellow, the original color of the exterior selected by Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum's architect.
There's also a shade of off-white that, with slights variations, has been the museum's public face over the years.
Warm yellowish beige, cool grayish white? Powell buff or London Fog?
Some preservation groups, pointing out that Wright abhorred white, favor restoring the building to its original color while some neighborhood associations prefer the museum's proposal to keep it a shade of off-white.
The associations argue that the building was buff yellow only for its first five years and that there have been four additions to Wright's circular structure, which opened in October 1959 months after the architect's death.
"This is not black and white. It's an extremely complex question, as stupid as that sounds for mere paint," said Pamela Jerome, director of Wanks Adams Slavin Associates, the project's preservation architect.
Seri Worden, chairwoman of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic District, believes the museum should be as Wright envisioned it.
"If the people of New York don't know what color Frank Lloyd Wright made this building, I think they should know," she said.
The paint job is part of a $27 million facelift that began in 2005.
The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has approved all changes to the museum's exterior since it was designated a landmark in 1990, could settle the dilemma as early as this week.
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