I.M. Pei

Sunday, January 01, 1978

Ieoh Ming "I.M." Pei was born in China in 1917. Pei came to the United States in 1935 to study at the University of Pennsylvania. As an architect, Pei created noteworthy buildings such as the east Building of the National Gallery of Art (1978), the John F. Kennedy Library (1979), the glass pyramid at the Louvre Museum (1989), and numerous other buildings in the United States and around the world. Pei received multiple awards including the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1983), Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize (1989), and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (1993).