Lifestyle
Frank Gehry, whose designs defied gravity and convention, dies at 96
“I love the relationship with the clients,” said architect Frank Gehry. In Bilbao, Spain, where he designed the groundbreaking building for the Guggenheim museum, “people come out and hug me,” he said.
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“I love the relationship with the clients,” said architect Frank Gehry. In Bilbao, Spain, where he designed the groundbreaking building for the Guggenheim museum, “people come out and hug me,” he said.
Dominieuq Faget/AFP/Getty Images
Swooping, swirling, gleaming, sculpted — Frank Gehry made buildings we’d never seen before. The architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles transformed contemporary architecture. He died Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., after a brief respiratory illness, according to his chief of staff. He was 96.
Gehry won all the top awards — including the Pritzker Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1999, when the American Institute of Architects gave him their Gold Medal, Gehry looked out at an audience that included contemporary gods of building — Philip Johnson, Robert Venturi, Michael Graves — and said, “it’s like finding out my big brothers love me after all.”
“He was probably the only truly great artist I’ve ever encountered who desperately cared what people thought of him and that people loved his work,” says Gehry’s biographer Paul Goldberger. The architect got his share of criticism — “accusations that he made crazy shapes and paid no attention to budget.”
But the praise was louder, because his striking buildings made people happy.
With 12 huge glass “sails,” the Louis Vuitton Foundation takes the form of a sailboat among the trees of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
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With 12 huge glass “sails,” the Louis Vuitton Foundation takes the form of a sailboat among the trees of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
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A woman walks inside the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
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A woman walks inside the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
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“I’ve always been for optimism and architecture not being sad,” Gehry told NPR in 2004. “You know, a building for music and performance should be joyful. It should be a great experience and it should be fun to go to.”
There was exuberance in his work. The swoops and swirls — made possible with aerospace technology — lifted the spirits of viewers used to post-war modernism — strict, boxy glass and steel buildings that looked imposing and unwelcoming.
Gehry says he found that style, cold, inhuman and lifeless. “I thought it was possible to find a way to express feeling and humanistic qualities in a building,” Gehry said. “But I wasn’t clear about it until I started experimenting, quite accidentally, with fish forms.”
He loved the shape of fish, and the way they moved. He drew them all his life, an inspiration that began in his grandmother’s bathtub in Toronto.
Gehry stands next his fish lamps at his exhibition at the Gagosian Mayfair gallery, in central London, in November 2013. As a child, Gehry remembers watching carp — destined to be dinner — swimming in his grandmother’s bathtub.
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Gehry stands next his fish lamps at his exhibition at the Gagosian Mayfair gallery, in central London, in November 2013. As a child, Gehry remembers watching carp — destined to be dinner — swimming in his grandmother’s bathtub.
Joel Ryan/Invision/AP
“Every Thursday when I stayed at her house, I’d go with her to the market,” he recalled. “And there would be a big bag of some kind filled with water that we would carry home with a big carp in it. We’d put it in the bathtub. I’d sit and watch it and the next day it was gone.”
Those carp were turned into gefilte fish — a classic Jewish dish — but stayed in Gehry’s memory long past suppertime. He translated their curves and motions into architecture. In Prague, Czechs call his elegant design for an office building “Fred and Ginger” — two cylindrical towers, one solid, the other glass, pinched in at the waist, like dancers. His Disney Hall and his Guggenheim museum swell like symphonies.
Gehry’s whimsical towers in Prague have earned the nickname “Fred and Ginger.”
Tony Hisgett via Flickr Creative Commons
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Tony Hisgett via Flickr Creative Commons
Gehry’s whimsical towers in Prague have earned the nickname “Fred and Ginger.”
Tony Hisgett via Flickr Creative Commons
“He really wanted you to feel a sense of movement,” Goldberger says. “A building is a static thing, but if it feels like it’s moving, for him that was more exciting.”
The Guggenheim — a billowing swirl of titanium in gold and sunset colors — excited viewers. After it opened in 1997, Gehry said everyone who came to him wanted a Guggeinheim. But Gehry wasn’t interested.
“Like all great artists, he wanted to keep pushing himself and move forward,” Goldberger says. “He did not want to copy himself. He did not want to do that building again.”
The Guggeinheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and The Disney Hall in Los Angeles (it opened in 2003, a swoosh of silver stainless steel, 1/16th of an inch thick) are Gehry’s signature buildings. But they’re a far cry from his early work. His own 1978 residence in Santa Monica sports common materials. If clients couldn’t afford fancy — marble, say — he’d use cheap.
Gehry constructed the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles out of stainless steel. “We’re living in a culture, in a time where movement is pervasive,” he said. “Everything is moving. And so if we hook onto that and use it as part of our language, our architectural language, there’s some resonance for it.”
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Gehry constructed the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles out of stainless steel. “We’re living in a culture, in a time where movement is pervasive,” he said. “Everything is moving. And so if we hook onto that and use it as part of our language, our architectural language, there’s some resonance for it.”
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Inside the Disney Concert Hall.
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Inside the Disney Concert Hall.
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“He started using plywood and chain link fence and corrugated metal,” Goldberger says.
Those buildings got attention. But the later ones made him a star — and a term was coined: Starchitect. Goldberger says Gehry hated it.
“He didn’t really hate fame,” Goldberger explains. “But he was too smart to sacrifice everything for it.”
Gehry kept faithful to his vision. He turned down jobs that didn’t feel right and imagined others that got built, were widely admired, but sometimes didn’t live up to his imagination.
“You know, what’s in my mind’s eye is always 10 times better than what I ever achieve because the dream image can leak …” Gehry said with a laugh. “But in terms of its public acceptance it’s beyond anything I ever expected. I’ve never been accepted before like this.”
Gehry received a National Medal of Arts from Bill Clinton and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama. The New Yorker called Bilbao “a masterpiece of the 20th century.” Architect Philip Johnson said it was “the building of the century.” And the public (with some exceptions, of course) adored the work.
“He made great architecture accessible to people,” Goldberger says, and that re-shaped their sense of what buildings could be.
He describes Gehry’s work as “one of those extraordinary moments where the most advanced art intersects with popular taste. That only happens very rarely in the culture, in any field.”
It’s been said that architecture is the message a civilization sends to the future. With walls that are shaped and sculpted, and buildings that look joyous and free, Frank Gehry’s is a message of humanism and hope.
The author of this obituary, Susan Stamberg, died in October 2025. The story was updated and reviewed before publication.
Shannon Rhoades edited the audio of this story. Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.
Nearly 280 filmmakers entered the Internet Archive’s Public Domain Film Remix Contest this year. Above, a still from King of Jazz. The 1930 film was used as source material in several contest submissions.
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Universal Pictures/Internet Archive
One of the most unusual of the creative treasures to enter the public domain this month is King of Jazz. The plotless, experimental 1930 musical film shot in early Technicolor centers on influential bandleader Paul Whiteman, nicknamed “The King of Jazz.”
In one memorable scene, the portly, mustachioed Whiteman opens a small bag and winks at the camera as miniature musicians file out one after another like a colony of ants and take their places on an ornate, table-top bandstand.
A new video based on clips from King of Jazz has won this year’s Public Domain Film Remix Contest — an annual competition that invites filmmakers from around the world to reimagine often long-forgotten literary classics, films, cartoons, music, and visual art that are now in the public domain. This means creators can use these materials freely, without copyright restrictions. In 2026, works created in 1930 entered the public domain.
Titled Rhapsody, Reimagined, the roughly two-minute video captures the King of Jazz‘s surreal quality: Cookie-cutter rows of musicians, showgirls, office workers and random furniture cascade across the screen as Whiteman’s winking face looks on.
“I wanted to transform the figures and bodies into more dream-like shapes through collage and looping and repetition,” said Seattle-based filmmaker Andrea Hale, who created the piece in collaboration with composer Greg Hardgrave. For video artists, Hale said discovering what’s new in the public domain each January is a thrill. “We’re always looking for things to draw from,” Hale said. “Opening that up to a bigger spread of materials is amazing. That’s the dream.”
A massive repository of content
The Internet Archive, the San Francisco-based nonprofit library behind the contest, digitizes and provides public access to a massive repository of content, including many materials used by contest participants. “These materials have often just been in film canisters for decades,” said digital librarian Brewster Kahle, who founded the Internet Archive in 1996.
This year’s submissions range from a reworking of the 1930 film The Blue Angel starring Betty Boop — another public domain entrant this year — instead of Marlene Dietrich, to an AI-generated take on the 1930 Nancy Drew book The Mystery at Lilac Inn.
Kahle said the Internet Archive received nearly 280 entries this time around, the highest number since the competition launched six years ago. “Things are not just musty, old archival documentation of the past,” Kahle said. “People are bringing them to life in new and different ways, without fear of being sued.”
The public domain in the era of AI
Lawsuits have become a growing concern for artists and copyright holders, especially with the rise of generative AI. Recent years have seen a surge in online video takedowns and copyright infringement disputes.
Media companies are trying to address the problem through deals with tech firms, such as Disney and OpenAI’s plan, announced late last year, to introduce a service allowing users to create short videos based on copyrighted characters, including Cinderella and Darth Vader.
“On the one hand, these licensing agreements seem quite a clean solution to thorny legal questions,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. “But what’s exciting about the public domain is that material, after a long, robust 95-year copyright term, is just simply free for anyone — without a team of lawyers, without a licensing agreement, without having to work for Disney or OpenAI — to just put online,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins also pointed out an interesting twist for people who create new works using materials from the public domain. “You actually get a copyright in your remix,” she said. “Just like Disney has copyrights in all of its remakes of wonderful public domain works like Snow White or Cinderella.” (The Brothers Grimm popularized these two characters in their 19th century collection Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But their roots are much deeper, going back to European folklore collections of the 1600s and beyond.)
However, this only applies to works created by humans — U.S. copyright law currently doesn’t recognize works authored by AI. And Jenkins further cautioned that creators only get a copyright in their new creative contributions to the remix, and not the underlying material.
This year’s Public Domain Film Remix Contest winner Andrea Hale said she’s using a Creative Commons license for Rhapsody, Reimagined. This means the filmmaker retains the copyright to her work but grants permissions that allow other people to freely use, share, and build upon it. “I’m keeping with the spirit of the public domain,” Hale said.
Mitt Romney’s Sister-In-Law
Suicide Note In Book of Mormon, Xanax In System
Published
Mitt Romney‘s sister-in-law left a handwritten suicide note tucked inside a Book of Mormon and had Xanax in her system when she died … according to the L.A. County Medical Examiner.
The ME’s report says detectives discovered a Book of Mormon on the front passenger seat of Carrie‘s car. In the final pages of the book, authorities say Carrie left a handwritten suicide note. Medications were also found inside the vehicle.
The report states Carrie had 6.3 ng/mL of Xanax in her system at the time of her death. A witness told first responders Carrie was seen pacing on the top level of the parking structure, watching security cameras, and looking over the edge of the parapet. The report also states surveillance footage captured her final moments.
The medical examiner’s findings note the injury occurred when she fell backward from a seated position on the rooftop parapet.
As we reported … Carrie died from blunt traumatic injuries after falling from the rooftop of a parking structure in Valencia, California, back in October.
Carrie’s husband, Scott Romney — Mitt’s brother — had reported her missing to the Sheriff’s Department. He told authorities she previously drove her car off a cliff two years earlier and had struggled with anxiety, per the report.
At the time of her death, Carrie was also in the middle of a divorce. Scott filed in June, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The couple married in 2016, and Carrie was Scott’s third wife.
This is the last year the Sundance Film Festival will be held in Park City, Utah. It is moving to Boulder, Colo., in 2027. Above, the Egyptian Theatre on Main Street in Park City.
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The Sundance Film Festival begins for the last time in Park City, Utah before heading to Boulder, Colo., next year. It’s a bittersweet finale for the country’s premier independent film festival, founded by Robert Redford in 1978.
With a gala, the festival plans to pay tribute to the late actor and director, who died of natural causes in September.
“Before he passed earlier this year, [Redford] shared with us this quote: ‘Everybody has a story,’” says the festival’s director, Eugene Hernandez. “This notion is such a great framing for a festival that has always been about finding and sharing with audiences the stories that come from all over the world.”
This year, the festival will screen films that got their starts at Sundance, including Little Miss Sunshine, which went on to be nominated for best picture at the 2007 Oscars.
The festival will also screen a remastered print of the 1969 movie Downhill Racer, in which Redford plays a champion skier. Redford was also a producer on this indie film.
“He would tell this story year after year about getting Downhill Racer made,” recalls Sundance senior programmer John Nein. “It became a way that he understood the notion of protecting independence and protecting the artistic voice of a film. He often used that when he talked to emerging filmmakers, to relate to the struggles that they had in getting their films made the way that they wanted to.”
Nein says one way to recognize that legacy is by programming 40 percent of the slate from first-time filmmakers. More than 16,200 films were submitted from 164 countries. Throughout the year, the Sundance Institute hosts labs and programs and provides grants and fellowships for independent filmmakers.
Over the years, Sundance has been a launching pad for filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Ava DuVernay, The Coen brothers, Ryan Coogler, Chloe Zhao and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Another filmmaker whose career Sundance supported is Rachel Lambert, who says she was inspired by a film Redford directed: Ordinary People.
“It’s a profound legacy a single human being can leave an entire nation’s culture,” she says of Redford. “It’s remarkable.”
Lambert will premiere her newest film, Carousel, a love story starring Chris Pine and Jenny Slate.
Also showing at Sundance: documentaries about Chicano theater pioneer Luis Valdez, singer Courtney Love, tennis star Billie Jean King, and South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Among the features in competition is The Gallerist with Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega.
Another is The Invite, with Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. The Invite‘s producer, David Permut, has been faithfully attending Sundance since the late 1980s, when he was in the audience for Steven Soderbergh’s breakout Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
“I never miss Sundance. I’ve been going every year since,” says Permut. “I stay for 10 days, I’m not in and out like a lot of people from Hollywood when they’re there with their film. I love the second week because it’s basically cinephiles from all over the world.”
Permut showed his first film at Sundance — Three of Hearts — in 1993. Last year, his film Twinless won the festival’s audience award.
“I have 57 movies I want to see this coming Sundance,” he says. “For me, it’s about discovery.”
Actress Hana Mana in The Friend’s House Is Here. The film was smuggled out of Iran to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Alma Linda Films
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Alma Linda Films
Some filmmakers have gone to great lengths to get their work screened this year — including the Iranian film The Friend’s House is Here.
The drama—set in Tehran’s underground art scene — was shot under the radar of Iranian authorities. Amid the country’s recent political turmoil, members of the film’s crew had to drive 11 hours to smuggle the film over the Turkish border to get it to the festival. According to the film’s publicist, the film’s two main actresses were not heard from for weeks during Iran’s recent unrest. The publicist says the women are now safe but have been denied visas by the United States to attend Sundance.
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