The angular structure of glass and marble, finished in 1978, was constructed out of the same Tennessee marble as John Russell Pope’s original National Gallery Building of 1941. But here Mr. Pei reshaped it into a building of crisp, angular forms set around a triangular courtyard. This structure gave him a chance to demonstrate his belief that modernism was capable of producing works with the gravitas, the sense of permanence, and the popular appeal of the greatest traditional structures. Ada Louise Huxtable, the senior architecture critic of The New York Times at the time, hailed it as the most important building of the era. The building recently reopened after a $69 million renovation.

Paris

The Louvre Pyramid