George and Ira Gershwin’s jaunty 1937 song “Nice Work If You Can Get It” begins with this wry observation about the fickleness of renown: The man who lives for only making money Lives a life that isn’t necessarily sunny; Likewise the man who works for fame— There’s no guarantee that time won’t erase his name. Today the name of David Adjaye, the fifty-nine-year-old Ghanaian British architect who less than three years ago was at the pinnacle of his career, has been erased with record speed. Last fall, when three important buildings by his office were completed on two continents—the Princeton University Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of West African Art in Benin City, Nigeria—Adjaye was conspicuously absent from the American inaugural festivities and barely mentioned in those institutions’ publicity materials.…