Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery

Please note that the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery is currently closed

MISSION

Founded in 1990, the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery produces original exhibitions that explore new architectural practices, research, and ideas. Through its collaborations with architects and artists, historical investigations, and public programs the gallery fosters creative projects and scholarly inquiries that enrich and expand GSAPP’s culture of experimentation and critical thinking. All exhibitions and programs at Ross Gallery, located in Buell Hall on the Columbia University campus, are free and open to the public.

HISTORY

Located in Buell Hall on Columbia’s Morningside campus, Ross Gallery opened in Spring 1990. Envisioned by Bernard Tschumi, then dean of GSAPP, as New York City’s first public exhibition space focused exclusively on architecture, the gallery launched with “The Filter of Reason: Work of Paul Nelson,” a show curated by Terence Riley, Joseph Abram, and Kenneth Frampton. In a New York Times review, the critic Paul Goldberger observed that the inaugural exhibition marked “a promising beginning for this handsome new architecture gallery at Columbia, which the school hopes will become a focal point for the city’s architectural community.”

Since then, Ross Gallery has continued to present exhibitions that cast new light on both historical and contemporary figures and issues, contributing to architectural culture and discourse both locally and globally. As the gallery’s first curator, Terence Riley’s exhibitions included monographic shows on Iakov Chernikhov (1990-91) and Kazuo Shinohara (1991), as well as a groundbreaking historical study of the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark 1932 exhibition “Modern Architecture: International Style.” In 1992 Joseph Rosa began his three-year tenure as curator with an exhibition of recent watercolors by Lauretta Vinciarelli (1992). Historical shows on modernist architects, such as Albert Frey (1993) and Morris Lapidus (1994), followed, in addition to a presentation of work by Wiel Arets, Ben van Berkel, Mecanoo, and other emerging Dutch architects in “Modernism without Dogma: Architects of a Younger Generation in the Netherlands” (1993). Between 1995 and 2004, Evan Douglis expanded the gallery’s curatorial scope to encompass both architecture and design, staging exhibitions on protagonists that included Eileen Gray (1996), Alvaro Siza (1997), Gaetano Pesce (1999), and Jean Prouve (2002; 2003-4). Under the direction of Mark Wasiuta from 2004 until 2016, the gallery offered a platform for rigorous scholarly research on understudied postwar projects, fueling an innovative program of archival exhibitions—notably, “Environmental Communications: Contact High” (2014), “Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game” (2015), and “Les Levine: Bio-Tech Rehearsals, 1967-1973” (2016). In 2016 Irene Sunwoo became curator of Ross Gallery, and currently steers an experimental exhibition program committed to supporting and collaborating with architects and artists through new research and design projects. Her exhibitions have engaged the work of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Cooking Sections, Torkwase Dyson, Frida Escobedo, Andrés Jaque, Norman Kelley, Armin Linke, and Liam Young, among others.

See also Columbia GSAPP exhibitions in all locations.