A most memorable event that greatly impacted and
crystallized the Deconstructivist movement was the 1988 Museum of Modern
Art exhibition entitled, Deconstructivist Architecture. Among the
architects that presented at the exhibition were Peter Eisenman, Frank
Gehry, and Bernard Tsuchumi. Eisenman was greatly influenced by Derrida,
and the two directly collaborated on projects together. They were both
deeply interested in the concept of the "metaphysics of presence," which
was the central focus of Deconstructivist philosophy in the theory of
architecture. Frank Gehry is an award-winning architect who is
well-known for such works as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain as
well as the Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tsuchumi
was an architect of French and Swiss heritage whose winning entry for
the Parc de la Villete Competition in Paris garnered much attention and
celebration. Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, the curators of the 1988
MOMA exhibition stated that "The projects in this exhibition mark a
different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been
disturbed. It is the ability to disturb our thinking about form that
makes these projects deconstructive" (Johnson).
