Curated by Barry Bergdoll, Corinne Bélier, and Marc Le Coeur

In his essay for the volume accompanying the Museum of Modern Art’s 1975 show “The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts,” Neil Levine sought to recover the “architectural legibility” of Henri Labrouste’s self-consciously precise drawings, which, Levine ruefully noted, had been “rarely unrolled and examined in detail.” This first solo exhibition in the United States of the challenging nineteenth-century French architect’s work is the occasion for unrolling them once again at moma, in a gathering of two hundred items: rarely seen drawings, photographs, models, and Labrouste’s own box of drafting tools. A catalogue with essays by each curator, as well as by Levine and David Van Zanten, will further illuminate the solecistic inventiveness of this student of the École who at once brilliantly articulated and subtly but forcefully undermined its classical orthodoxies. The exhibition debuted at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris, where it remains on view through January 7.

— Edward Eigen