Terence Riley, who as an architectural curator and museum director was instrumental in bringing to fruition two of the most critical will work of 21st-century museum architecture, died on Monday at his household in Miami. He was 66.
His family said the dying was unexpected but did not disclose the trigger.
As the main curator of architecture and structure at the Museum of Modern-day Art, Mr. Riley assisted find and guidebook the Tokyo-centered architect Yoshio Taniguchi in the museum’s $858 million growth, which was done in 2004.
Later on, as director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, he worked with the Swiss architecture company Herzog & de Meuron to create a new home for the museum that has been acclaimed for its style and integration into its ecosystem. Along with his museum duties, Mr. Riley preserved an architectural observe, founded in 1984, with John Keenen.
“He usually amazed me with his wicked sense of humor and his fierce intelligence,” Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director, reported in an interview. “He seemed to try to remember aspects about each individual architect he at any time talked to.”
In his 15 decades at MoMA, Mr. Riley curated displays on Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe that lose new gentle on all those quintessential fashionable architects. He engaged contemporary themes in the exhibitions “The Un-Non-public House” (1999), “Light Construction” (1995) and “Tall Buildings” (2004), bringing focus to architects like Kazuo Sejima, Toyo Ito and Jeanne Gang, who were not however properly acknowledged.
As MoMA proceeded with its enormous growth in the early 2000s, Mr. Riley requested 10 international architects of commonly different fame and sensibility to prepare sketchbook styles, which he then displayed at the museum. The invitees bundled Mr. Taniguchi, an architect tiny recognized outdoors his native Japan. Mr. Riley urged the museum to take his style and design, which reorganized the challenging tangle of additions to the museum house, initially developed in 1939, into a coherent entire.
Mr. Riley’s job in the job, Mr. Lowry stated, “was to communicate with the curators about their tips and obtain the appropriate language for Yoshio to have an understanding of what they intended.”
With overlapping slabs of silvery aluminum, black granite and glass, the new MoMA opened in 2004, adding 252,000 sq. feet for a overall of 630,000, all wrapped all-around a soaring atrium. The taller and more generously proportioned galleries permitted a refreshingly different mounting of art, additional visual breathing area for every single piece, and extra area for the at any time-increasing crowds of guests.
Nicolai Ouroussoff, reviewing the building in The New York Moments, referred to as it “one of the most exquisite will work of architecture to increase in this city in at the very least a generation” and “a around-ideal case in point of how architecture can be forceful with no competing with the artwork it enfolds.”
Terence Riley was born on Nov. 6, 1954, in Elgin, Sick., to Philip and Mary Jo (Lundberg) Riley. His mom was a homemaker his father ran a printing enterprise. Terence acquired a bachelor of architecture diploma from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s diploma in architecture and urban scheduling from Columbia College.
He is survived by two brothers, Dennis and Brian.
Mr. Riley’s curatorial perform started when he was decided on to operate the Arthur Ross Gallery at Columbia, an exhibition place devoted to architecture. His function there drew the attention of Philip Johnson, who had founded the Museum of Modern day Art’s architecture section. Mr. Riley was brought into the division and grew to become the main curator for architecture and structure in 1991.
Afterwards in his tenure he assisted start off the MoMA/P.S. 1 Youthful Architects Software, which showcased early-occupation architects. Presented smaller grants, the picked out architects established immersive environments in the courtyard of the P.S. 1 Up to date Art Center in Long Island Metropolis, Queens. The exposure, and the MoMA imprimatur, served launch influential firms like Store Architects and WORKac.
“It was his most impressive brainchild,” reported Barry Bergdoll, a Columbia professor in architectural record who succeeded Mr. Riley as MoMA’s chief architecture curator.
Mr. Riley remaining MoMA in early 2006 to turn out to be director of the Miami Art Museum (subsequently renamed the Pérez Artwork Museum). He lifted its profile with a series of well-been given exhibitions and embarked on an ambitious program to construct a new residence for the museum up coming to Biscayne Bay. He brought in Herzog & de Meuron to design it.
“Jaques Herzog informed me the serious rationale he wanted to do this museum was to operate with Terry,” explained Mary E. Frank, who was about to become the museum’s board president at the time.
The museum wanted to increase community money with extra than $100 million in private items. But fund-raising lagged powering, and the challenge took yrs. Eventually, with options in spot, Mr. Riley stepped down in 2009, returning to the Miami workplace he experienced opened for his architecture apply.
The Miami museum, at a price of $220 million, opened in 2013. Its style was striking for its wide concrete-beam roof overhangs latticed with wooden from which extensive tubes of plantings are suspended like gentle draperies. The overhangs and plantings protect glass partitions and outdoor decks — beloved by the public — from the searing sunlight.
The existing director, Franklin Sirmans, explained Mr. Riley experienced guided the architects in building a creating nicely suited to Miami.
“The constructing never ever imposes alone on you,” he mentioned. “It’s not a museum in which you stand 56 inches away from a painting and just appreciate. He envisioned a frequently energetic establishment, a neighborhood center that is related to our working day-to-working day surroundings.”
After Mr. Riley still left the museum, he and Mr. Keenen ongoing to operate on projects in Miami, together with with the developer Craig Robins, who wanted to channel the energy unleashed by the Miami Artwork Basel artwork fairs. “Terry was the architect, but they were being also an alliance, scheming alongside one another,” explained Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at MoMA who remained shut to Mr. Riley.
Via his firm, Dacra, Mr. Robins reworked a neighborhood of nameless products showrooms into the city’s Style and design District, mixing artists with splashy designer boutiques and res
taurants. “He noticed that art and layout would be the new rock stars,” Mr. Keenen claimed.
Keenen/Riley’s most recent venture for Mr. Robins was the Museum Garage, whose facade is wrapped with exuberant decorative works by architects curated by Mr. Riley.
“Terry liked style and design, but he also liked the often intricate approach of obtaining factors built,” Mr. Keenen stated. “He experienced far more persistence than I ever did, as perfectly as the intellect and persons competencies to see matters via.”