Frank Gehry was my first friend in Los Angeles. I met him at a party in New York a few days before I flew to L.A. to start my job at LACMA in January 1976—just almost 50 years ago. Frank asked me, “If you don’t know anyone in town can I take you to dinner on Sunday?” Thus began our friendship and a working relationship that has spanned nearly my entire career at LACMA.
Frank had a history of designing exhibitions at LACMA beginning in the 1960s, including Art Treasures of Japan (1965), Billy Al Bengston (1968), and Art in Los Angeles: Seventeen Artists in the Sixties (1981). Together, we’ve worked on many exhibitions at LACMA, including The Avant-Garde in Russia (1980), German Expressionist Sculpture (1984), “Degenerate Art” (1991), and Exiles + Emigrés (1997), as well as shows of Ken Price (2012) and Alexander Calder (2013) and Frank’s own retrospective (2015).
After winning the Pritzker Prize (1989), the Praemium Imperiale Prize (1992), the Gish Prize (1994), and Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016), among many accolades, and the successes of Guggenheim Bilbao (1997), Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003), and Fondation Louis Vuitton (2014), among others, Frank certainly didn’t need a job of designing exhibitions at LACMA! But he was always there for me. He helped me solve problems; he made my shows better. He always wanted to know: “what did the art need? What did I want to convey?” He worked within our budgets, our timeframes, never overpowering the art. Our carpenters and painters were proud to execute the designs that he and his team created. Just before the pandemic, Frank and I worked on the installation for Oskar Schlemmer’s figurines from the Triadic Ballet as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Weimar Festival. Beginning in 2019 we worked together on an extensive redesign of LACMA’s Modern Art Galleries that opened in 2021.
My special memories with Frank include a weekend in Bilbao a few months before the Guggenheim opened to the public, the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall, the vernissage of Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and celebrating many birthdays with him, including his 90th at the Boulez Saal in Berlin. Attending a concert at Disney Concert Hall with Frank was always extra special.
Our friendship grew when he discovered that I liked to sail and I was lucky to enjoy so many glorious days heading towards Malibu aboard his remarkable boat, Foggy. Being on the water was Frank’s happy place, surrounded by friends, family, colleagues, and clients—he loved to share the experience with all of us. (And I knew to bake his favorite cookies—preferably lemon bars and palmiers.)
Frank’s generosity is legendary. He was always eager to lend his support and his time to those who needed it—children from underserved communities, political causes and candidates. He cared deeply about making art and music accessible to children. He donated so much time, talent, and money (often anonymously) in our city, his adopted home.
If you were fortunate enough to be a friend of Frank’s it was for life. He cared about you, about your family, about your well being. He was always curious. He loved his family: his wife Berta and their sons Sam and Alejandro, his daughter Brina, his two granddaughters, and his sister Doreen. He loved music and musicians. He loved art and artists. He loved people. I am devastated by the loss of my dear friend Frank. I hope there’s sailing and a great boat waiting for you in the next life my friend.
In 2012, Frank wrote me a note that I still treasure and keep in my office:
