The architect I. M. Pei (1917–2019) was born in the Republic of China, and came to America, alone, in 1935. He was enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, but soon transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a degree in architecture in 1939. Pei lived to 102, and during his long career he erected the east building at the National Gallery of Art, modernized the Louvre, built Hong Kong’s Bank of China tower, and designed the Museum of Islamic Art, in Doha. In the first major retrospective on Pei, his entire career is examined through six themes: his Cross-Cultural Foundations; Real Estate and Urban Redevelopment; Art and Civic Form; Power, Politics, and Patronage; Material and Structural Innovation; and Reinterpreting History through Design. Using the mediums of drawing, sketching, videos, models, and photographs, the exhibition tells Pei’s extraordinary story. —Elena Clavarino