Frank Gehry Exhibition Celebrates Lesser-Known Works and Studio Legacy

This article highlights a new posthumous exhibition at Gagosian Beverly Hills that spotlights Frank Gehry‘s lesser-known non-architectural work. From dozens of fish lamps to a variety of animal sculptures, the show runs May 14 through June 27 and was organized by Deborah McLeod as a personal love letter to Gehry, who passed away in 2025 at age 96.

Gehry is known for monumental buildings like the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. This exhibition reveals how his fluid, biomorphic language also shaped intimate objects, giving them a kinetic quality and a sculptural energy similar to his architectural designs.

Apostrophes to Gehry: a posthumous homage at Gagosian

The show departs from traditional architectural retrospectives. It focuses on Gehry’s tactile explorations—sculptural pieces, lamps, and animal forms—that reveal a consistent formal language across different scales.

Gehry’s love for material experimentation and movement is clear in works that invite close inspection of craftsmanship, texture, and light. McLeod presents the display as a compassionate gesture, inviting friends and the public to connect with Gehry’s warmth and generosity as they remember him.

From fish lamps to kinetic sculpture

The exhibition features Gehry’s fish lamps, often made from Formica and lit with carefully selected LED bulbs. The scaled surfaces scatter light to create immersive effects in a darkened gallery space.

Gehry saw the fish as a “perfect form,” a motif that appears in both his small pieces and his architecture. This shows how his sculptural practice connected intimate objects and large buildings, using a consistent design language.

A survey of works and scale

The show also includes a range of animal pieces that suggest movement and energy. Highlights include a nearly 10-foot stainless-steel crocodile and a seven-foot stainless-steel Bear With Us, created after a patron requested a full-size version of a small award.

In daylight, these pieces reveal Gehry’s skill with proportion, surface, and the play of light on metal. The installation features fish, snakes, and other animal forms, each designed to engage viewers with a sense of motion.

Gagosian plans limited editions of some works in stainless steel and electroplated gold. This brings Gehry’s sculptural experiments to a wider audience as collectible objects.

• Fish and snakes—fluid silhouettes that echo Gehry’s architectural curves
• Bear With Us—a landmark sculpture that engages daylight as a transformative medium
• Crocodile—a dramatic, nearly 10-foot stainless-steel form with an imposing presence
• Animal lamps crafted in Formica with LED illumination for nuanced light diffusion

Longstanding collaboration and the arc of Gehry’s practice

The show highlights Gehry’s long relationship with Larry Gagosian, which began with a 1984 exhibition of his distinctive lamps. This ongoing collaboration reflects Gehry’s material experimentation and sculptural sensibility as well as his architectural achievements.

Displaying these objects in a major gallery setting brings new attention to Gehry’s non-architectural work and broadens the story of his creative legacy.

Legacy, memory, and public engagement

Deborah McLeod emphasizes Gehry’s warmth, generosity, and pro bono work in low-income communities. She believes the exhibition should help friends and the public channel their grief.

The intention is to memorialize Gehry as an innovator in art and architecture. It also affirms his role as a compassionate presence within the worlds of art and design.

By presenting his animal-inspired sculptures alongside his architectural masterpieces, the show invites audiences to consider how Gehry’s curvilinear vocabulary resonates in both public spaces and intimate, luminous objects.

For practitioners and enthusiasts in architecture and engineering, this exhibition offers a case study in how a single formal language can traverse scales and media. It shows how a curator’s understanding of an artist’s life can transform a memorial into a dialogue about legacy and mentorship.

The exhibition highlights the ongoing relevance of handcrafted inquiry in a digital era. If you’re seeking a nuanced lens on Gehry’s practice, the Gagosian show in Beverly Hills is a poignant and instructive stop.

 
Here is the source article for this story: ‘It’s a love letter’: exhibition pays tribute to Frank Gehry’s lesser-known works