It’s hard not to feel some sense of civic pride walking through Frank Gehry retrospective exhibition, opening this Sunday at LACMA. Gehry has transformed city skylines and cultural institutions around the world, and we’re fortunate enough to claim him as an Angeleno. Sure, most of those misshapen metallic projects are elsewhere on the globe and the majority of his Los Angeles projects are tucked away on private property, Walt Disney Concert Hall aside. But all of those have come from the mind of a man who has called Los Angeles home for more than a half-century, and who is still shaping the look of this city’s future.
Organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the exhibition highlights over 60 Gehry projects in more than 200 drawings and 66 models. Though the concept images are intriguing in their own right, most visitors will be drawn toward the massive scale models; it’s a chance to take a bird’s-eye view of some of the world’s most renowned contemporary buildings.
The exhibition space, which was appropriately designed by Gehry Partners, is broken up into six different movements in the architect’s career, all threaded together by Gehry’s dedication to urbanism. Though the buildings’ relationship with their environments are certainly a central theme—a wooden model of Prague’s warped Dancing House sits in the middle of a manicured European square while the Walt Disney Concert Hall greets traffic in miniature form on Grand Avenue—Gehry’s distinctive style takes center stage. His energetic ink scribbles and zigzagging schematics look nearly incomprehensible on their own, but once you swing around and view their sculpted counterparts, those flattened drawings suddenly swirl into 3-D space.
Frank Gehry, LACMA.Photograph: Fredrik Nilsen
For Angelenos, the exhibition’s most timely section is an addition that's exclusively at LACMA. Set before a massive photograph of the studio (pictured above) "Gehry Partners: In the Studio Now" assembles models of some of the Playa Vista-based architecture firm’s ongoing projects, including 8150 Sunset on the Sunset Strip, the Ocean Avenue Project in Santa Monica and the Jazz Bakery, a performance space in Culver City. Notably absent: the LA River.
During an exhibition preview, though, Gehry spoke about his involvement with the redesign of the LA River. Mayor Garcetti personally invited him onto the project, which will unify 51 miles of flood control across 15 cities as a water reclamation project. The initial news about Gehry’s attachment to the project hit the press sooner than he had hoped, but he said he promises to unveil a formal proposal sometime soon. In the meantime, Gehry spoke confidently about the project’s potential: “If we do it right, we can make the High Line [in New York] look like a little pishy thing.”
Frank Gehry opens at LACMA on Sunday, September 13. You can hear a conversation with the architect on the same day at the first of a three-part speaking series.