The Eames House Reopens After Wildfires, Launches New Foundation
Closed for five months due to smoke damage, the Pacific Palisades landmark is welcoming back visitors with a meticulously restored interior and a new foundation that aims to cement Charles and Ray Eames’s impact for generations to come
The Eames House narrowly escaped serious damage from the devastating wildfires that tore through Pacific Palisades in January, owing largely to efforts to fell hundreds of trees near the property the previous year. After a meticulous five-month restoration to repair extensive smoke damage, the landmark Case Study House #8 has finally reopened to the public. This summer, visitors can again tour the vastly influential midcentury residence that Charles and Ray Eames designed for themselves in 1949, with an added bonus: the studio next door will open its doors to the public for the first time, with plans to host exhibitions, workshops, and panel talks.
The reopening coincides with the debut of the Charles & Ray Eames Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to safeguarding and expanding the late couple’s international legacy, which spans philosophy, photography, art, exhibition design, toys, lighting, and more. Announced during Milan Design Week and helmed by their grandchildren Eames Demetrios, Carla Atwood Harman, Byron Atwood, Llisa Demetrios, and Lucia Dewey Atwood, the new foundation consolidates decades of stewardship into a singular institution with wide-reaching goals.
“As grandchildren, it has been our honor to ensure that Charles and Ray continue to make a global impact,” says Eames Demetrios, Director of Eames Office and Chairman of the foundation. “Their work extended far beyond their most recognizable contributions in furniture and architecture. It’s our responsibility to ensure those contributions are not lost. This next chapter is about succession planning and looking ahead to future generations.”
As part of the launch, the board appointed Adrienne Luce as the foundation’s executive director. A veteran of institutions like the Getty Museum and the Claremont Museum of Art, she brings more than two decades of experience in arts and cultural leadership. The board of directors has also welcomed two new members: fourth-generation Eames relative Jackie Cassel and Eckart Maise, former chief design officer at Vitra, its first non-family member.
The Foundation’s early programming reflects the scope and depth of the Eameses’ work. A three-year Charles & Ray Eames Fellowship will support new scholarship, beginning with Catherine Ince—former chief curator of V&A East and curator of “The World of Charles and Ray Eames” at London’s Barbican Art Gallery—whose research will culminate in a publication about the couple’s philosophy, work, and impact through a contemporary lens. Also launching next year is an initiative called Eames Architecture that highlights their pioneering work in prefab housing. Additional projects include publishing Charles Eames’s 1970–71 Norton Lectures at Harvard, launching high school education programs in Los Angeles, and revisiting the Eameses’ influential India Report.
In 2027, the Foundation will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the landmark educational film Powers of Ten with a special reintroduction. Illustrating the size of the universe, the nine-minute documentary expands out from a human-scale picnic to the outer edges of the cosmos, and then reduces inward to a single atom. The film reportedly helped inspire the creation of Google Earth.
The house’s reopening also marks the implementation of a long-term conservation management plan originally conceived with the Getty Conservation Institute in 2018, but which has taken newfound urgency after the wildfires. Lucia Dewey Atwood, who chairs the Foundation’s Conservation and Collections Committee, will lead these efforts. The Foundation will serve as a connective hub for the sundry global institutions housing Eames collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, the Vitra Design Museum, the Henry Ford, and the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity. To strengthen this global network, it will convene next year at the first-ever Eames Conference in Los Angeles.
“Charles once said, ‘Eventually everything connects,’” Luce notes. “This profound insight guides our Foundation’s mission: to forge meaningful connections and ignite curiosity across disciplines, cultures, and generations.”