November 14, 2008
If any doubt remains that the Toronto-born Frank Gehry is one of the world’s great architects, his overhaul of the Art Gallery of Ontario, which opens today, should erase it. Mr. Gehry’s AGO is a restrained masterpiece, and a reminder of the power of architecture to reinvent ideas, institutions and cities.
The city of Toronto is nearing the end of an unprecedented round of cultural construction. Some of its results – Daniel Libeskind’s renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum and Jack Diamond’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts – opened to mixed reviews. A few, including a new film centre and a blockbuster museum of Islamic art bankrolled by the Aga Khan, are still to come.
Ismailimail 