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NEWS FROM THE GETTY
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DATE: May 21, 2015
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GETTY ANNOUNCES ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY TO RECEIVE THIRD ANNUAL GETTY MEDAL
Frank Gehry. Photo: © dbox
LOS ANGELES – The J. Paul Getty Trust announced today that it will award the third annual J.
Paul Getty Medal to Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry. The medal will be awarded
at a celebratory dinner at the Getty Center on September 28, 2015.
“There have been very few individuals in all of history who have changed the course of
architecture, and Frank is one of them,” said J. Paul Getty Trust President and CEO James
Cuno. “He effectively reinvented architecture with his use of new technologies in the design of
beautiful and iconic buildings. And architecture will never be the same as a result.”
Over more than five decades, Frank Gehry has built an architectural career that has produced
iconic buildings in North America, Europe and Asia, and earned him the most significant
awards in the field, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize, perhaps architecture’s premier
accolade. Other honors include the National Medal of Arts, Ordre National de Legion
d’honneur Commandeur from the French government, Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement
Award at the Venice Biennale, and others too numerous to mention.
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Among his most notable buildings are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt
Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in
Chicago, Illinois; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower in New York City; and Fondation Louis
Vuitton in Paris, France. In all, his buildings have received more than 100 national and regional
AIA awards. In 2010, Vanity Fair conducted a survey of architects to determine the most
important building of the last 30 years: Gehry’s Bilbao museum was the overwhelming winner.
Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. He
received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from USC in 1954, and studied city planning at
the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He founded Gehry Partners, LLP, in Los
Angeles in 1962, a full-service architectural firm that developed extensive international
experience in the design and construction of academic, museum, theater, performance and
commercial projects.
Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry’s work include a concern that people dwell comfortably within the
spaces that he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the context and culture of
their sites.
Despite his international stature and renown, he continues to be closely associated with Los
Angeles, where his 1978 redesign of his Santa Monica home launched his international career.
“Frank holds a special place in his art for the work of contemporary artists. He was a central
figure in the contemporary art world in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s, working closely with
Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, John Altoon, Bob Irwin, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha and Ken Price. And
he continues to work closely with artists, including Claes Oldenburg and Jeff Koons, for whom
he has collaborated on deeply sensitive installations of their work,” said Cuno. “Given his
contributions to architecture, and the Getty’s extensive research and collections in Los
Angeles art and architecture at the mid-century and beyond, and the commitment of the
Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute to the
conservation and study of modern architecture, it is fitting that we present Frank with our
highest honor.”
The J. Paul Getty Medal was established in 2013 by the trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust to
recognize living individuals from all over the world for their leadership in the fields in which
the Getty works. The first recipients were Harold M. Williams and Nancy Englander, who were
honored for their leadership in creating the Getty as it exists today, and the second was Lord
Jacob Rothschild, honored as the most influential volunteer cultural leader in the Englishspeaking world.
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The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual
arts that includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation
Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience
from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu.