Frank Gehry

Gehry graduated with a degree in Architecture from the University of Southern California and was admitted to Harvard Graduate School of Design to Study Urban Planning. He returned in LA and began his own firm in 1963. His early work had an unfinished quality that was described by Paul Goldberger of the New York Times as “vastly more intelligent and controlled than it sounds to the uninitiated; he is an architect of immense gifts who dances on the line separating architecture from art but who manages never to let himself fall.” His talent earned him commissions the world over throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Notable structures from his early career include include the Vitra Furniture Museum and Factory (1987) in Weil am Rhein, Germany; the American Center (1988–94) in Paris; and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum (1990–93) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Gehry’s reputation continued to grow in the late 1990s and he became known for creating buildings that resemble billowing sculpture. This form reached its pinnacle with his Guggenheim Museum (1991–97) in Bilbao, Spain. Other notable works from this period include, Experience Music Project (1995–2000), the Art Museum of Ontario, The Walt Disney Concert Hall (completed 2003), the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park (completed 2004), and New World Center (completed 2011).

Gehry’s work is credited with created a renewed interest in architecture in America. Among Gehry’s many awards are the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989), the National Medal of the Arts (1998), and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (1999).