Quiet is not small. Quiet is not diminished. Quiet, in the case of Graham Gund (1940–2025), names a way of being in the world: generous without announcement, attentive without spectacle, and deeply invested in the belief that to contribute to a place is to be patient, to practice deep looking, and to be attentive to its ongoing care.

Graham Gund’s impact on Kenyon College is widely felt yet often understated. His architectural imagination reshaped the campus. His collection and philanthropy brought artists and artworks into daily view. Yet, in the spirit of his own reserve, much of this unfolded quietly. Some students only recognized his name as that of a donor. Others encountered him through campus lore. Some were fortunate to meet him during one of his regular visits and discovered a curious, funny, and attentive interlocutor—remarkably understated relative to the generosity of his attention.

This exhibition stems from our collective desire to better understand the man behind the name, and to do so by paying close attention to his practice as an architect and a collector. Although his name is attached to many buildings, few people know the true depth of his contributions to our campus—he was a discreet individual who gave generously without seeking recognition in return. This exhibition also grows out of our educational work in The Gund Associates program where the curatorial research group composed of (name all members of the group) were asked to be in conversations with friends and colleagues of Mr. Gund, to develop visual reference to convey their research, to study his collection, and propose a framework that could show who Graham Gund was to Kenyon and what his legacy means beyond the campus. This exhibition invites viewers to consider Mr. Gund as an architect, as a collector, and as someone whose belief in art shaped both the built environment and the intellectual life of this place and many others.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Gund grew up surrounded by art and architecture that would inform his career. His mother brought him to the Cleveland Museum of Art, instilling a practice of close looking that stayed with him for decades. He earned a Master of Architecture from RISD and a Master's in Urban Design from Harvard, where he and his sister Agnes explored postwar painting and sculpture in New York galleries. His reserved demeanor did not blunt his enthusiasm; he could spend hours silently taking in artwork, deriving pleasure from the act of sustained attention. “Good art has a way of making us reflect about ourselves and the world around us,” he once observed, “and I believe that good architecture does the same thing; it has the potential to be a positive, energizing force for people.”

To Kenyon, Mr. Gund brought this philosophy in both spirit and form. He designed and gifted buildings that expanded the college’s contemporary horizon, extended public art initiatives, and nurtured spaces—like our own gallery—meant for learning and gathering. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger describes Mr. Gund’s process of working with context as “picking up subtle cues (from existing buildings), and then designing new in a way that neither imitates nor defies, but enriches through a kind of harmonic counterpoint.” This sensibility—quiet in gesture yet profound in effect—allowed Mr. Gund’s buildings to converse with history rather than overpower it. His firm, Gund Partnership, emphasizes that his spaces were designed to inspire thought and emotion, filled with “whimsical elements to delight and intrigue people.” In his encouragement of creative interactions with the environment and careful attention to architecture’s influence on community dynamics, Mr. Gund’s design sensibilities are uniquely suited for public and educational spaces such as museums, libraries, civic spaces, and academic buildings. A special attention to light and landscape helped articulate environments tuned to reflection.

To speak of quiet here is to honor this approach. It is a reminder that legacy need not be measured by noise or monument, but by influence, continuity, and the communities that grow within one’s work. The reach of Mr. Gund’s practice extends well beyond Gambier—across campuses, libraries, museums, and civic spaces—and his support of living artists has shaped contemporary cultural production in ways rarely acknowledged.

This exhibition is both tribute and study. It asks us to reconsider assumptions about philanthropy, authorship, and architectural presence. It invites us to look longer, to ask better questions, and to understand that what he gave to Kenyon was not only buildings, art, and resources, but an ethos of quiet investment in the life of a place. In honoring that quiet, we recognize the magnitude of his legacy and the care with which he offered it.