The much-anticipated Louis Vuitton Foundation (Fondation Louis-Vuitton), in Paris, is now open to the public. The massive museum for contemporary art, designed by Frank Gehry, is a spectacle: The gallery spaces are contained in cement blocks covered by massive, curved pieces of glass. Set in a public park in the Bois de Boulogne in the western part of the city, the structure seems to alight on the earth like a spaceship from the future.

Bernard Arnault, the 65-year-old chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (MC:FP), commissioned the museum, and both he and the 85-year-old Gehry hope this building will be an indisputably positive contribution to a complicated legacy.