Frank O. Gehry: Design Process and the Lewis House

November 8, 2008–April 5, 2009

This exhibition explores for the first time how a decade-long residential commission for Peter Lewis in Lyndhurst, Ohio (1985-1995), gave Frank Gehry a unique opportunity to experiment, and in the process, achieve the formal and technological breakthroughs that have made him one of the most influential architects of our time. Out of this single critical project, Gehry developed the complex geometrical language of architecture that was to be made famous at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, and other buildings. Organized in collaboration with Gehry Partners, LLP, the exhibition will include some 120 architectural models, drawings, photographs, videos, furniture, and decorative arts that reveal Gehry's evolutionary creative process, and how his study of materials and forms for this finally unrealized commission, informed his ongoing and subsequent designs. In conjunction with the fall opening of this landmark exhibition, Collab: The Group for Modern and Contemporary Design at the Museum, presented Frank Gehry with its 2008 Design Excellence Award.