NORFOLK, VA.- This year marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Scope Arena, one of Norfolk’s most distinctive buildings and arguably its finest piece of modern architecture. The Chrysler Museum of Art celebrates this occasion with Pier Luigi Nervi: The Art and Science of Building, on view Oct. 1, 2021–Feb. 27, 2022. The exhibition highlights the work of Scope’s internationally famous architect who built UNESCO world headquarters in Paris, skyscrapers in Turin and Paris and the Papal audience hall in the Vatican. It was one of Nervi’s two Olympic arenas in Rome that caught the eye of Norfolk’s visionary mayor Roy B. Martin, Jr. during a televised Olympic event.

“We're thrilled to present this exhibition on Nervi and highlight Norfolk's greatest work of modern architecture. He brought art and science together and created beauty out of necessity, inspiring us all,” said Lloyd DeWitt, Ph.D., the Chrysler Museum’s chief curator and Irene Leache curator of European art.

Scope remains the largest thin-shell domed structure in the country and features the same kind of mesmerizing and intricate coffered ceiling that so impressed Martin in 1960. Nervi was an engineer by training and made a virtue of necessity, developing techniques to build large structures with small prefabricated units to avoid using scarce construction cranes in Italy after World War II. He developed steel mesh reinforced concrete that was far lighter and thinner than was in common use, which yielded more elegant and economical results. Nervi said of his technical achievements, “If it is also art, then I am happy.”

Pier Luigi Nervi: The Art and Science of Building is curated by Cristiana Chiorino of Communicarch in Rome, a specialist in Nervi’s work. A video on view at the Chrysler introduces Nervi the architect while panels guide visitors through Nervi’s major projects across the world, which include convention centers, an embassy, sports stadiums, skyscrapers, airplane hangars and a cathedral. The show also includes several of Nervi’s studio drawings for Scope, on loan from the Sargeant Memorial Collection at the Norfolk Public Libraries, as well as several watercolors by Kenneth Harris recently donated to the Chrysler by the Norfolk Housing and Redevelopment Authority (NHRA), whose urban renewal project was crowned by Nervi’s Scope and Chrysler Hall.