FRANK GEHRY, architect: designs for MUSEUMS

For decades, architects, artists and curators have argued about whether a museum should be an active or passive container, a background or a foreground for the museum’s contents. Renowned architect Frank O. Gehry has brought the museum distinctly into the foreground. FRANK GEHRY, architect: designs for MUSEUMS, a multimedia exhibition, showcases Gehry’s extraordinary design contributions and celebrates both his completed buildings as well as several still to be realized museum projects. designs for MUSEUMS is on view at the Corcoran from October 2, 2004 through March 21, 2005.

Using models, design drawings, plans, photographs and video, FRANK GEHRY, architect: designs for MUSEUMS explores how form follows function in unexpected ways. From complex exteriors that reflect the diversity of the activities that take place inside to interiors that illustrate how the architecture interacts with the objects––and the visitors––in the museums, the exhibition shows how Gehry’s designs challenge convention, yet brilliantly meet the needs of museums in the twenty-first century.

FRANK GEHRY, architect: designs for MUSEUMS highlights four existing museum buildings and several as yet unrealized museum designs. The completed projects include: Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; and Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA. Those that have not yet been completed include the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Ohr-O’Keefe Museums, Biloxi, MS; and MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany.

Canadian-born American architect and artist Frank O. Gehry (b. 1929) is widely recognized as inspiring a new direction in modern architecture. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, and he studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1989 he won the coveted Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest award. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1999 he received the AIA Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects. He is known internationally for his distinctive structures that incorporate new forms and materials, in particular the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which has received unanimous critical and public acclaim.

FRANK GEHRY, architect: designs for MUSEUMS is organized in collaboration with the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota and Gehry Partners, LLP. The exhibition is made possible by the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Truland Foundation, Centex Construction, and The President’s Exhibition Fund. In-kind support is provided by the Sony Technology Center, Pittsburgh.