Frank Gehry, the award-winning architect whose revolutionary museum designs reshaped the art world, died on Friday in Santa Monica, California, at age 96 due to a brief respiratory illness. Best known for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), Gehry's signature style—featuring sloping, incongruous forms clad in titanium—transformed the architectural landscape of art institutions worldwide. His other major museum projects include the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and an upcoming Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi.
Gehry's impact extends far beyond aesthetics: the Guggenheim Bilbao single-handedly revived a struggling city's economy, sparking the so-called "Bilbao effect" that inspired museum directors globally to pursue ambitious architectural projects as urban regeneration tools. While his work drew both praise—architect Philip Johnson called Bilbao "the greatest building of our time"—and criticism, including artist Andrea Fraser's 2004 essay linking the museum to neoliberal fantasies, Gehry fundamentally redefined what a museum could be, moving institutions away from Neoclassical or modernist templates toward expressive, sculptural landmarks.