Ann and Graham Gund at the dedication of the Gund Gallery in October 2011.
Graham Gund ’63 H’81, a celebrated architect, champion of the arts and philanthropic leader who reshaped Kenyon’s physical campus and, in the process, its student experience, died on June 6. He was 84.
The Cleveland native’s work in Gambier reads like a love letter to his alma mater written in brick and stone. Over the past quarter century, he designed more than two dozen buildings stretching from one end of Middle Path to the other. These campus landmarks have shaped the daily rhythms of student life for decades, and the master plan he helped author in 2004 and later updated promises to influence them for generations to come.
“It is impossible to capture in words the mark Graham made on Kenyon. It is, however, visible everywhere on campus — from the ambition of our campus master plan, to the both brilliant and subtle details of the buildings he lovingly designed and restored, to the masterful works of art he created homes and sites for, to the breathtaking view corridors he spotted and preserved,” President Julie Kornfeld said. “Graham Gund understood Kenyon deeply, and he demonstrated to us all how to harmonize our past and our future, our minds and our spirits.”
Gund’s vision and generosity fueled the most significant period of campus investment since the College’s founding. Over the years, he quietly distinguished himself as the most generous donor in Kenyon’s history. He and his wife, Ann, were the lead donors on building projects that would become the beating heart of campus: from the light- and life-filled Chalmers Library and Lowry Athletic Center, to contemporary centers for teaching and learning spanning every academic division, to a vibrant mix of student residences — the bustling North Campus Apartments, stately Thomas and Winkler Halls, and the beautifully restored Bexley Hall. He also designed Gund Gallery, Kenyon’s teaching art museum, which is named in his honor.
“He knew every building, every path, every tree of Kenyon’s spectacular campus,” said Trustee David W. Horvitz ’74 H’98. “He led the restoration of older facilities and designed new ones that enabled the College to keep moving forward in its quest to provide the finest educational opportunities and student experiences. For generations to come, Kenyon students will be the beneficiaries of Graham’s vision and generosity.”
A founding trustee of Gund Gallery, it was here that his personal passion for the arts was particularly evident. Gund and his wife, Ann, donated more than 80 works of contemporary art to seed the museum's permanent collection and have continued to contribute to it generously over the past 10 years. Their contributions have included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Kiki Smith and Dawoud Bey, as well as a towering Richard Serra sculpture that has become the centerpiece of the West Quad, whose buildings Gund also designed.
“Graham’s legacy is embedded in every corner of this institution,” said Daisy Desrosiers, director and chief curator of The Gund. “His passion for contemporary art — and for the artists who make it — was palpable. With his wife, Ann, they modeled in countless ways what it means to support creativity with care and conviction. They believed deeply that art is essential to learning, that it fosters curiosity, critical thinking and self-discovery. Because of them, world-class artists continue to come to Kenyon — not only to show their work, but to teach, to question and to be in dialogue with our community.”
Gund was born Oct. 28, 1940, to banker and philanthropist George Gund II and Jessica Laidlaw Roesler and studied psychology at Kenyon, where he was part of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Even then he was interested in architecture, sometimes pondering how the campus might grow and change. But before he would come to act on those musings, Gund pursued postgraduate study at the Rhode Island School of Design and received a Master of Architecture and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
He worked with Walter Gropius, the modernist pioneer who founded the Bauhaus school of design, before founding Gund Partnership in 1971. The critically acclaimed firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in the design of libraries, academic facilities, visual and performing arts centers, athletic facilities and more.
Gund’s award-winning work can be found around the world, from the massive renovation of Ohio State University’s Thompson Library in Columbus to the police station that he converted into the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The Washington Post described Gund’s “brave new buildings” as exuberant and eclectic; the Boston Globe called his work “playful, bright, evocative, and fun.”
Closer to home here in Gambier, his many designs have been honored as well. Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger P’04 H’05 — a former Kenyon trustee and current member of The Gund’s board — called Gund “in effect, Kenyon’s official architect,” as the designer of Storer Hall — the 1999 addition to Rosse Hall — and every major addition to campus since. His gift, Goldberger said, was in changing campus with knowledge, sensitivity and great design.
“Graham Gund had a greater influence on the Kenyon campus than anyone since Philander Chase. His work at Kenyon restored a high level of architectural ambition to the campus, simultaneously connecting to Kenyon’s past and offering an optimistic vision of the future,” Goldberger said. “He was determined to make Kenyon both bigger and better, and to show that there did not have to be a contradiction between these two things.”
As Goldberger and others have observed, Gund’s work managed both to respect Kenyon’s historical Collegiate Gothic style and connect it to modern sensibilities. And so Gambier is blessed with work that harmonizes with a more traditional style near the campus core — Chalmers Library — and more modern around the edges, such as the Lowry Center.
Each project contains special details — Gund’s artistic fingerprint — that helps bring them to life. Consider the images of doves etched in windows in the renovated Peirce Hall, where Gund ingeniously used an atrium to marry the Great Hall to the soaring Thomas dining hall, or the dichroic glass tiles in Tomsich Hall, part of the Science Quad that Gund designed in 2001.
In Gund, there was a unique respect for the past that coexisted with a radical reimagining for the future. It’s a throughline that connects all his work on a campus that’s acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful in America and couldn’t have been accomplished without his intimate knowledge of it.
In a 2011 interview with the Kenyon Alumni Magazine, Gund — who received the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service Award in 2004 and the Gregg Cup in 2008 in recognition of his history of service — said he had a particular affinity for working in a campus environment because it combines both architecture and planning.
“One building can have a significant effect on a campus,” he said. “I try to restore the fabric of a campus, which often involves going back to the original vision. It’s particularly gratifying when they’re like Kenyon, which has such a strong idea behind the campus that gives it a strong structure. All the old buildings have quite a proud kind of feel to them. They were forward-looking when they were built.”
In New England, Gund was active in the cultural arts and architecture communities, serving as a trustee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and of the Institute of Contemporary Art. He founded and chaired the Boston Foundation for Architecture, was on the board of Historic New England, was an overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and served as a member of the advisory committee on the arts at Harvard and Radcliffe colleges.
On a national level, Gund was a member of the National Committee on Design and of the distinguished College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. He also served as a Trustee for the National Building Museum and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
He holds several honorary degrees, including one from Kenyon.
Gund is survived by his wife, Ann, and their son, Grady. Plans to celebrate his extraordinary life will be shared in the coming weeks.