A First-Ever I.M. Pei Retrospective Opens at M+ in Hong Kong

This may sound odd coming from someone who grew up in New York City, but my first immersive experience with modern architecture came when I moved to Ithaca. For three of the four years I spent in that isolated upstate New York town as a student at Cornell University, I was a docent at the school’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. The building, designed by I.M. Pei and opened in 1973, was often called the “sewing machine” for its uncanny resemblance to one, with its thick base, shaft to one side, and cantilevering upper floors over the base. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, only that I loved being inside of it.

Rendering of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Image by J. Henderson Barr