{"id":173934,"date":"2025-12-08T12:01:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/173934\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T12:01:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:01:15","slug":"from-museums-to-stores-handbags-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/173934\/","title":{"rendered":"From Museums to Stores, Handbags and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFrank Gehry, the famed architect who died Friday at age 96, had close ties to the worlds of luxury and retail, in later years working closely with Bernard Arnault<\/a> and the LVMH<\/a> Mo\u00ebt Hennessy Louis Vuitton group on everything from one of Paris\u2019 most iconic museums to stores.<\/p>\n

\n\tArnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH<\/a>, conscripted Gehry to conceive the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, and said Friday, \u201cI am profoundly saddened by the passing of Frank Gehry, in whom I lose a very dear friend and for whom I shall forever retain boundless admiration. I owe to him one of the longest, most intense, and most ambitious creative partnerships I have ever had the privilege to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Photo<\/p>\n

\n\tA personal project of art sponsorship, and a gift to France that he named after his biggest and most profitable brand, it opened with much fanfare in 2014 and has since hosted blockbuster exhibitions featuring Mark Rothko, David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat and, currently on show, Gerhard Richter. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe will remain a genius of lightness, transparency, and grace,\u201d Arnault said, lauding his \u201cunparalleled gift for shaping forms, pleating glass like canvas, making it dance like a silhouette.\u201d<\/p>\n

The luxury titan said Gehry\u2019s work \u201cwill long endure as a living source of inspiration for Louis Vuitton as well as for all the maisons of the LVMH group,\u201d which include Dior, Givenchy, Fendi, Loewe and Marc Jacobs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWith the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Cr\u00e9ation, he bestowed upon Paris and upon France his greatest masterpiece, the highest expression of his creative power, commensurate with the friendship he bore our city and the affection he showed for our culture,\u201d Arnault added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPietro Beccari, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, added his condolences to Gehry\u2019s family and loved ones.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe world has lost a true genius\u00a0whose creativity and innovative spirit profoundly transformed the world of architecture,\u201d Beccari said. \u201cWe are extremely proud to have had the privilege of collaborating with him over the years, and honored to have considered him a friend of the house. Frank Gehry\u2019s legacy will undoubtedly last forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGehry\u2019s ties to LVMH went far beyond the museum, however. In fact, at his death he was working on several projects for the luxury group, including an 82,000-square-foot flagship for Vuitton in Beverly Hills and turning a former \u201960s building near the Fondation Louis Vuitton into an exhibition space and events center.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe even created fragrance bottles with striking Murano glass stoppers, store windows, and a watch and handbags for Vuitton, first in 2014 and again two years ago.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe sketches I do for buildings represent the beginnings of a thought, but then it takes months to translate it into a building. Whereas here, the sketches-to-handbag is a couple of days,\u201d the Canadian American architect told WWD at the time of the 11 designs of the Capucines bag he had done.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Frank<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFrank Gehry\u2019s limited-edition handbag designs for Louis Vuitton. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMario Kroes\/Courtesy of Louis Vuitton<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome years ago I did a collection for Tiffany & Co. and it was similar. We were taking the architectural language that we were playing with and transferring it to the smaller scale. It\u2019s much faster. I don\u2019t have to go to so many meetings to get it approved,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Tiffany & Co. project was a collaboration with Maria Sharapova, who teamed with Gehry on the jewelry that the professional tennis player wore at the 2009 U.S. Open. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Gehry\u2019s involvement with the worlds of fashion and retail stretched much farther back. <\/p>\n

\n\tBorn Frank Owen\u00a0Goldberg in Toronto, at 18, Gehry moved\u00a0with his family in 1947 to Los Angeles where he befriended artists\u00a0and boundary-pushing designers like Rudi Gernreich. He had considered becoming a truck driver or a chemical engineer but was reeled in by architecture\u2019s connection to art. Gehry graduated\u00a0from the University of Southern California with a bachelor\u2019s degree in architecture in 1954. Around that time he changed his name to Gehry at the suggestion of his first wife, Anita Snyder. A post at Victor Gruen Associates was followed by a stint serving in the U.S. Army.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once back in civilian life, Gehry studied urban planning at\u00a0Harvard\u00a0University\u2019s Graduate School of Design<\/a> via the G.I. Bill. A job at Pereira and\u00a0Lucian was followed by a return to Victor Gruen Associates that involved a year abroad in France. But by 1962, Gehry had ventured out on his own and like some of his artist friends favored everyday materials like chain-link fencing and unpainted plywood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter he and Snyder divorced in 1966, Gehry wed Berta Aguilera in 1975, who survives him along with his four children. Among his most important earlier works was the 1977 renovation of his own Santa Monica home. He had heard that the house contained spirits, so he transformed the bungalow into a jagged arrangement of glass and corrugated steel.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Gehry\u2019s first projects was designing the enclosed 1980 mall known as Santa Monica Place, which is located at the south end of Santa Monica\u2019s Third Street Promenade shopping district. It eventually became obsolete, shuttered and transformed into an open-air shopping center with a restaurant deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0His first hometown project was the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which opened in downtown L.A. in 2003. Gehry was commissioned to design<\/a> that building a little before being named the recipient of the Pritzker in 1989.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by architect Frank Gehry in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever high-reaching his designs were, Gehry\u2019s inspiration\u00a0sometimes sprang\u00a0from the ordinary. Having reportedly been mesmerized as a boy by the carp that swam in his grandmother\u2019s bathtub, he later used fish as a recurring motif including in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The 1997 debut transformed\u00a0the city with nearly four million people visiting the museum in its first three years, which generated an estimated\u00a0500 million euros in economic activity and 100 million euros in taxes.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Frank<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Guggenheim Bilbao begins to take shape from \u201cBuilding Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry\u201d by Paul Goldberger.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGehry Partners LLP<\/p>\n

\n\tArnell recalled Friday that they met by him just showing up at Gehry\u2019s Venice Beach studio to say that he really loved his work and would like to do a monograph of his work. \u201cHe said, \u2018If you can\u2019t get it organized, I\u2019m good with that.\u2019\u201d
\u00a0
The two men went on to collaborate on other projects and Arnell previously served as a temporary president in Gehry\u2019s office and Gehry curated Arnell\u2019s first photography exhibition. \u201cI\u2019ve shared years and years of an extraordinarily loving education from this man, and I am indebted to him for most everything that I\u2019ve done in my life. I also had the privilege of having had him encourage me to focus on photography.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Describing Gehry as \u201carguably one of the most significant figures in architecture ever,\u201d Arnell said. \u201cHis ability to create extraordinary and important structures has left an amazing footprint of imagination, creativity and vision all over the world from homes to museums to skyscrapers. He is going to be recognized as one of three in the last hundred years that really had an extraordinary impact on architecture and more importantly, on mentoring the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon Gehry winning the Pritzker Prize for architecture, the jury wrote, \u201cHis sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury, in making this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2000, the media world was abuzz after learning that Gehry had completed a sleek cafeteria for all Cond\u00e9 Nast staffers in the company\u2019s Times Square headquarters. Conceived by Cond\u00e9 Nast\u2019s late chairman S.I. Newhouse, the cafeteria was reportedly a $30 million to $35 million investment, and it marked the architect\u2019s first completed space in New York City. <\/p>\n

\n\tSeven years later, the American holding company IAC tapped Gehry to design its strikingly futuristic headquarters at 555 West 18th Street in Manhattan. The sail-like glass facade was designed with flowing, ethereal forms and reflections that resemble ripples on water or waves.\u00a0(Gehry was a lifelong sailor.) <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Cityscape<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe IAC corporate office building, and the One High Line residential building in New York City.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUCG\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tBarry Diller, chairman and senior executive at IAC and Expedia, said, \u201cIt was a phenomenal experience working with Frank Gehry on one of his few New York projects and that I believe the IAC Building will be a standout to the test of time.\u201d <\/p>\n

Gehry\u2019s circle of friends included another star-chitect Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016. The pair periodically taught concurrent studios at Yale University so they \u201ccould sort of hang out,\u201d Gehry once said. Both talents were influenced by the Deconstructivist movement and each had work featured in the Museum of Modern Art\u2019s \u201cDeconstructionism in Architecture\u201d exhibition in 1988.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exacting and said to be difficult to work with at times, Gehry faced criticism by some for the interiors of his structures and the challenge of constructing his designs. After the 2015 release of \u201cBuilding Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry\u201d\u00a0by the esteemed architecture critic Paul Goldberger (a decades-long friend of Gehry\u2019s), he told National Public Radio, \u201cI guess I have an ego somewhere that comes out. I hadn\u2019t realized that I turn stuff down quite the way I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis 100-plus awards included the National Medal of Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and\u00a0Commandeur of the National Order of the Legion of Honor. By his own account, Gehry told Wallpaper\u00a0magazine in 2011,\u00a0\u201cThe best thing [that could happen] for me is to train these young guns [partners in his firm] and mother-hen them out into the world and watch like a proud papa while they grow. That\u2019s my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"gehry\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe architect was a lifelong sailor.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Peter Arnell\/Courtesy Peter Arnell<\/p>\n

\n\tPrior to his death, Gehry was working on one of his most ambitious projects, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, with a facade that looks like a range of steel tubes set against one another. Long delayed, that museum is expected to debut next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frank Gehry, the famed architect who died Friday at age 96, had close ties to the worlds of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,27379,438,146,85,46,13929],"class_list":{"0":"post-173934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-bernard-arnault","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-lvmh"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}