This fall gave us our first look at Frank Gehry’s ambitious remodeling of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on which the architect has been toiling for more than a decade. If intended to reassure skeptics that his work will be respectful and understated, his new museum restaurant could hardly have performed better. Called “Stir,” it is a warm and handsome space with floors of red oak and walls of Douglas fir. The open lattice of curved wooden beams that hangs from the ceiling like a late-Gothic net vault imparts a cozy sense of enclosure to those who dine beneath it. This distinctive shape, the architect tells us, will be reprised in the new galleries he will add in the course of his renovations.

When it was announced in 2006 that Gehry, the designer of the extravagantly unbuttoned Guggenheim Bilbao, would be turned loose on Philadelphia’s serene temple of art, there was excitement but also alarm. Gehry had never worked on a significant historic building. Conscious of this, the museum made a point of stressing that although his mandate was “to create dynamic new spaces for art and visitors,” he was to do so “without disturbing the classic exterior of a building that is already a defining landmark in Philadelphia.” And, in fact, his first interventions were comfortingly restrained. He gave the museum a 425-car parking garage and tucked it out of sight, invisible except for the most discreet of pavilions projecting above ground. A new loading dock