Man with Plans

Though he "never looked at art until 1976," architect Richard Gluckman has now literally built his career around it. He's admired for designing clean, straightforward galleries, artists' and collectors' homes, and museums—ineluding renovations for the contemporary wing of Bos-

ton's Museum of Fine Arts ("They hired me from the proverbial napkin sketch") and Pittsburgh's upcoming Andy Warhol Museum. Notes David McKee, who this month unveils his

new, Gluckman-created space in the restored Deco tower at 745 Fifth Avenue, "His very subtle stamp doesn't intrude on a gallery's function." Gluckman has wittily devised one sliding sheet-plastic and stainlesssteel wall to resemble the abstract paintings of McKee's artist Sean Scully. In fact, Gluckman's work is influenced more by the Minimalist art he reveres than by his architectural heroes, Wright and Le Corbusier. "My interest in Minimalism preserved me from postmodernism," he reports gratefully. His restrained approach is part of the sensibility making that "grandiose Reagan-era style" obsolete.

AMY FINE COLLINS