Terence Riley, AIA, an architect, author, and curator who was an influential figure in the architectural community of New York City and Miami, died Tuesday in Miami at the age of 66. As former chief curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he curated countless exhibitions on modern and contemporary architecture and design. He also played a pivotal role in MoMA’s $850 million renovation and expansion by Yoshio Taniguchi, Hon. AIA.
“As a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he brought wide attention to lesser-known architects from around the world and focused on ideas that affect how and where we live. As a consulting architect to the Miami Design District, he adeptly led the way to turning art into architecture and architecture into art,” says Beth Dunlop, an author and the former architectural critic for the Miami Herald.
Born in 1954 in Woodstock, Ill., Riley studied at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana where he received his B.Arch. in 1978, and then at Columbia University, where he received his M.Arch. and masters in planning in 1982. As director of Columbia University’s Architecture Galleries, he curated exhibitions on modern architecture, and the architects Paul Nelson and Iacov Chernikov. In October 1991, he joined MoMA as a curator in the department of Architecture and Design, and a year later, was promoted to director of the department. He continued to critically re-evaluate the Modern movement through his exhibitions and also began to promote the new generation of architects and designers after Postmodernism. “The Light Construction show was my manifesto,” said Riley in a 2018 interview with Iconic Houses. “There was a definite feeling that Postmodernism was over and I was trying to memorialize that. Kazuyo Sejima, Herzog & Meuron, and Ben van Berkel all got an early museum mention.”
For Sean Anderson, MoMA’s associate curator of the department of architecture and design, Riley’s role is lasting and impactful, even today. “As both an architect and critic, Riley reimagined how we observe, expand, and challenge Modernism’s afterlives,” says Anderson. “From refined exhibitions such as Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect and Mies in Berlin to The Un-Private House, as well as his intersections with crucial design practices the world over, Riley’s incisive and prospective thinking remains a bellwether for the ways in which the Architecture and Design Department as well as the Museum reflects upon the now and its evolving complex narratives.”
Anderson also views Riley’s support for emerging architects as important for the architectural community: “His enduring support for emerging architectural practices was embodied by helping found the radically inventive Young Architects Program at MoMA PS1.”
For many years, the YAP program was a springboard that launched the careers of emerging architects by offering them the opportunity to design an innovative outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 in Queens, N.Y. Winners in the early years of the program arguably created some of its most ambitious designs: William E. Massie’s Playa Urbana/Urban Beach, Emergent Architecture’s Light Wing, and SUR by Xefirotarch, just to name a few.
SHoP Architects’ 2002 immersive Dunescape, for example, used digital software tools of the day to optimize the design of their sweeping wave-like canopy and sitting platform and ensured that it could be efficiently built. For Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA, founding principal at ShoP Architects, Riley’s support of their office in 2000 when they built their pavilion was instrumental to their firm’s growth over the ensuing decades. “Terry did that for many young architects and therefore made a huge impact on the entire American architecture community,” says Pasquarelli. “His leadership of large projects such as MoMA’s many phases of expansion to small projects like The Young Architects Prize for PS1/MoMA clearly demonstrated his care for high design.”
After stepping down as Chief Curator in 2006, Riley departed New York to become the director of the Miami Art Museum–now the Pérez Art Museum Miami. His selection of Herzog & de Meuron as architects of the new museum was important in elevating the caliber of contemporary civic architecture in that city. “PAMM offered a new paradigm for museums as civic spaces where art was the focal point, probably more evolutionary than revolutionary,” says Dunlop.
Architectural critic and author Alastair Gordon agrees: “I think Terry helped to reshape the sunny city of Miami as much as anyone with his keenly perceptive eye, his championing of Herzog & De Meuron for PAMM and generally elevating the level of architectural discourse that led to other major works by Zaha, Rem, Nouvel, and a much higher level of architectural awareness at the University of Miami School of Architecture and the Miami Beach Urban Studio,” says Gordon. “His seminars were the most thoughtful and stimulating for students and I always learned so much when I was invited to serve as a juror.”
Riley and his business partner John Keenan founded their architecture firm Keenan-Riley, (K/R)in 1984, was known for its work for art museums, galleries, artists, and collectors. After working for PAMM, Riley resumed his role with K/R as an architect. In 2019, Riley designed the renovation of a high school building in Sarasota, Fla., into a museum for the Ringling College of Art & Design.
“From the moment I met Terry, around 1990, when I was publishing The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, to these past few days, I have admired and loved him as friend, colleague, and mentor,” says Cathy Leff, director emerita of Wolfsonian-FIU and director of Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami. “He shaped and impacted many so many architects, designers, students, and left his indelible imprint on many cities and countries. As a Miamian, I am so grateful for his delivering the Perez Art Museum. I am devastated by this loss but so grateful for the full, productive, and generous life he lived.”
