[We wish every architect we mention could be immortalized in The Simpsons]
In a city where selling out is an art, its not surprising to see archives for sale. We can't imagine he's hurting for cash, but Frank Gehry is considering the sale of his architectural archives and is weighing his options. While the Guggenheim seems like the natural choice since he's their golden boy septuagenarian, they can only get their greedy little hands on it if they pony up the cash. And Gehry's finding rent prices for storage is a bitch in LA:
“I don’t want to give it away — it’s an asset,” Mr. Gehry said. “It’s the one thing in your life you build up, and you own it. And I’ve been spending a lot of rent to preserve it.”The asking price is somewhere in the "multimillion dollar" range. So who has that kind of endowment? Who could it be? Hmm, if only LA had a museum and cultural institution with a $3 billion endowment. An institution that's already been snapping up architectural archives. Yeah, it'll probably just go to the Guggenheim after all.
· For Architects, Personal Archives as Gold Mines [NY Times]