The MIT Museum introduced this week it has acquired the archive of I. M. Pei, an MIT alum, class of 1940. The archive incorporates ephemera from the Pritzker Prize–successful architect’s 64-year profession.
“This landmark donation marks the homecoming of I. M. Pei to MIT,” mentioned Michael John Gorman, MIT Museum director. “We’re deeply grateful to Pei Cobb Freed & Companions for entrusting the Pei archive to MIT, bringing Pei’s archive ‘residence’ to MIT.”
The Pei archive has over 1,500 rolls of architectural drawings, 50 architectural fashions, and 1,000 linear toes of manuscripts documenting exchanges between Pei and his contemporaries.
Drawings that can be accessible to the general public for the primary time because of the archival acquisition are of the Louvre’s modernization in Paris, 4 important MIT buildings, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame, and extra.
The acquisition will assist advance the MIT Museum’s Structure Assortment’s mission of conveying the evolution of architectural schooling since its founding within the 1860s.
Hashim Sarkis, MIT Faculty of Structure & Planning dean, mentioned MIT is a becoming residence for the treasure trove.
“Pei’s companion, the late architect Henry Cobb, as soon as spoke to me about how essential MIT was in I. M. Pei’s life and profession,” Sarkis mentioned in an announcement. “Pei got here to the US from China to check structure and located at MIT a spot the place he might belong. It was additionally at MIT that he obtained one in every of his first main nonresidential commissions—the Cecil and Ida Inexperienced Constructing for Earth Sciences (1962)—starting an extended relationship with the Institute and its campus.”
Sarkis continued:
“There’s something deeply significant about seeing this archive come to MIT, the place a lot of that journey started,” Sarkis added. “It is going to change into a residing useful resource for our college students, providing direct entry to the drawings, fashions, and concepts of an architect whose work continues to form the best way we take into consideration cities, establishments, and the general public realm.”
The drawings and archives are anticipated to be processed and catalogued by fall 2028.
