Once upon a time artists were architects, and architects were artists. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini designed palaces, churches, fountains and piazzas in 17th-century Rome while achieving prominence as a sculptor. Michelangelo was a painter, sculptor and architect, as was Giorgio Vasari, who also wrote biographies of his contemporaries.

In modern times, with increasing specialization, the disciplines of art and architecture have parted company. Architects design buildings for clients with a brief in mind, whereas artists can give free rein to their ideas. But there remains among many architects a residual attachment to the idea of being an artist, or at least to the idea of architecture as a creative and imaginative discipline.

Perhaps no contemporary architect takes himself more seriously as an artist than Frank Gehry, 79, who for years worked on private domestic commissions before causing a sensation with his spectacular design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Since then he has produced an array of dazzling buildings, including the new Peter B. Lewis Library at Princeton, which opened in September.

To coincide with the opening of the library comes “Frank Gehry: On Line” at the Princeton University Art Museum, a selection of 31 drawings by the architect along with a selection of models for his most recent buildings. Accompanying the show is a little catalog with an essay by Esther da Costa Meyer, an associate professor at Princeton, in which she argues for the influence of art and artists in Mr. Gehry’s architectural practice.