Gehry Seeks Multimillions for Archive

The NY Times explores what happens to celebrity architects’ drawings, models and telephone logs culled from decades in the design trenches. Hint: They’re for sale.

Frank Gehry is the prime starchitect examined in the article. Gehry’s archive includes 30,000 square feet of models, a slide library, a digital archive and 5,000-plus drawings, what someone called a "beast." The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal offered Gehry $1.5 million for papers and drawings related to a house he designed for philanthropist Peter Lewis, but Gehry declined because he didn’t want to divide up his work. According to Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, a Frank Gehry archive would cost the institution multimillions. Gehry told the Times, “I don’t want to give it away – it’s an asset."

Archives, according to the Times, are generally donated, not sold because institutions that acquire them do not have large budgets and donors usually are concerned with finding a home for their work. In other words, most museums can’t afford six- or seven-figure purchases. The Mies van der Rohe archive at MoMA requires the staff of a library in order for the materials to be accessible to researchers. And then there’s the money required for storing, processing and making it available to the public in the first place.

“There is a huge seismic shift,” Mr. Bergdoll said. “It used to be architects would be so grateful that there was someone interested in dedicating space to their work, and they would donate it. Now architects view their designs as a kind of profit center. Architects are getting valuations of them as though they were selling the studio of Picasso.”

Gehry=Picasso? Hmm. And if you saw the Gehry show at the Guggenheim a few years back, you probably have a sense of what might be in his archive.

Photograph by Jake Dobkin

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By Jill Priluck in Arts & Entertainment on July 23, 2007 3:23 PM

Comments [rss]

angry_pickle

Gehry buildings just strike me as expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Look at all those curves and twists and turns all of which would seem to require highly customized (and highly expensive) replacement parts in the future. I'm not sure it has a short art-span; people are always looking back and resurrecting old styles as the new hip thing.

And that Tiffany/Gehry jewelry ... so damn ugly; it could only possibly sell as a status symbol or as jewelry for someone with a flair for big, ugly, and tacky.

bradedward

I wasn't so much putting down the LaserDisc as I was merely comparing the short life span of Gehry's work. But I agree, it would be wrong to compare something so awful like Gehry to an object that was just mediocre at best.

guest

Don't put down the LaserDisc. You're obviously an ignorant fool when it comes to knowledge of it.

Let me say it again: Ignorant Fool.

dickdogfood

I don't even hate his buildings -- some of them are grand -- but fuuuck if AY isn't misguided.

dickdogfood

They should bulldoze his Santa Monica house and replace it with a to-scale papier-mâché model of his Atlantic Yards project made from all 5,000 of those drawings.

Tim N.

Gehry can't spell Picasso.

What kinds of things go through this schmuck's mind to think that his drawings of his fucking ugly buildings would be worth money? Makes me think if I pee in the snow and take a snap of it I could raise a few bucks.

bradedward

Do you think a person of average build could hit that building with a rock from the "High Line"?

Note to self: Leave annoynomous buckets of rocks near Frank Gehry building.

Finished........now.

bradedward

And what was with his little deal with Tiffany's a few months back. Why was he designing jewelry?

Wow. I never realized how much I hate Frank Gehry. I need to take a nap now.

bradedward

Frank Gehry is an elaborate 40 year prank on the art community.

bradedward

Did anyone else notice that on the link provided to Frank Gehry's show that is was spondered by Enron? Coincidence?

Toby von Meistersinger

This is even more proof that Gehry is a no talent hack.

guest

I have lost alot of respect for Gehry in recent years ever since he said he did do a design for the Freedom Tower because they couldn't pay him enough money. He just comes off as too money hungry. Is all about the $$ for him. Let him archive his own stuff or lets his heirs sell it in pieces.

Elderta

Gehry should cough up the money himself and hire an archival team to take care of his collection if he doesn't want it broken up. I'm pretty sure that his collection will be able to sustain itself financially eventually.

If he wants to sell his collection, does he realize how much money an institution is also going to have to cough up just to make the collection accessible? I think that he's going to have to break it up because no one is going to be able to both buy the entire collection and maintain it as well.

Oh, and if he needs an archivist, I'm available...

guest

agreed. I associate Gehry's work with 'gee, wow look what I can do in Autocad' crap. these building will be the equivalent of the 1950's white co-op buildings that we're now stuck with throughout the city.

bradedward

The building in the picture I believe is right on the Hudson River by Chelsea Piers. Before knowing it was Genry's, my first impression upon seeing this building a year ago was how outdated it will look in only a few years.

Does anyone else agree?

I feel like all his buildings will have a short "art-span". (Is that a word?) I equate it to the Laser Disc.