The painter and installation artist Daniel Buren, associated with the Conceptual Art movement, has been a dominant figure in the art world since his 1968 exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, in which he blocked
the only entrance to the gallery with stripes.
Walking through Piano's just - completed Whitney building recently, I thought not
only of the Kimbell's travertine stairs, which lead from the east
entrance to the main floor and are washed with soft light from the
galleries» vaults, but also of Kahn's Yale University Art
Gallery and Yale Center for British Art, where natural light illuminates the stairwells, marking important transitional passages in the architecture.