Frozen Music: Frank Gehry and the Walt Disney Opera House

The Branch Museum’s inaugural exhibit returns to our galleries after fifteen years, and will showcase over 100 images of the construction of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, photographed by Gil Garcetti.

Frank O. Gehry practiced on the fringe of the architectural mainstream before gaining worldwide renown. Early in his career, he worked to develop a personal style through experimentation on his own house and his furniture line of cardboard chairs, and he eventually became a prominent figure in Deconstructivism. The completed Walt Disney Concert Hall has begun to transform Los Angeles, making a “place” in the heart of an urban environment previously lacking in identity. As a work of art, the building’s curved planes of steel create unusual and inviting relationships that change by the hour with the movement of the sun. It is a masterpiece that reinforces Gehry’s reputation as an innovator capable of flexing the boundaries separating architecture from art.

In the summer of 2001, photographer Gil Garcetti drove past the energized construction site of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and was inspired by what he saw: high in the air, crawling precariously on top of an arched beam, was a man in a hard hat. Over a nine-month period, Garcetti developed relationships with the members of the Ironworkers Union Local 433. He moved from one steel beam to another without the benefit of a safety harness to document their exploits on one of the most challenging construction projects at the start of the 20th century.

In early 2003, Gil Garcetti returned to the Walt Disney Concert Hall after an acquaintance introduced him to the Hasselblad X-Pan II panoramic camera, through which he saw unique opportunities to capture the building’s new skin. The magical qualities of the building – its composition, form, shape, and the ever-changing light conditions – seduced Garcetti, who said, “We knew they were building a concert hall – a hall of unusual beauty. What most of us never realized was that they were also building hundreds of works of abstract art.”

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.