Frank Gehry, the architect behind the Guggenheim Bilbao, Geffen Contemporary at MoCA, Los Angeles, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, among other museums and art spaces, died last Friday at his home in Santa Monica, California. He was 96. Ben Luke discusses his long engagement with art, artists and museums with Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic and Gehry’s biographer.
Left: Serpentine. Right: The FLAG Art Foundation
Photo: © Andy Stagg for Serpentine, Photo: © Steven Probert
Serpentine and the US-based FLAG Art Foundation last week announced the creation of a prize for artists that will see £1 million being awarded over 10 years to five artists, or £200,000 to each recipient—the largest contemporary art prize in the UK given to a single artist. Ben speaks to Glenn Fuhrman, the founder of The FLAG Art Foundation, and Jonathan Rider, its director, about the prize.
Joan Semmel, Sunlight, 1978
The Jewish Museum, New York. Purchase: Fine Arts Acquisition Fund, 2010-35. © 2025 Joan Semmel/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Sunlight (1978) by Joan Semmel. The painting features in a new exhibition opening at the Jewish Museum in New York this week, and we speak to the show’s curator, Rebecca Shaykin.
- Paul Goldberger is the author of Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, published in 2015 by Knopf, and Why Architecture Matters, published in 2009 by Yale University Press
- Joan Semmel: In the Flesh, Jewish Museum, New York, 12 December-31 May 2026
