Christopher Mount, the former architecture and design curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is going bi-coastal.

Not content with just one gallery in New York dedicated to architectural photography, models and drawings, he’s opening a second in Los Angeles.

“There’s so much good experimental work going on in L.A., and it doesn’t seem to get across the Mississippi,” the former editor-in-chief of I.D. magazine says.

So tonight, he’s opening a show there, featuring Balthazar Korab’s photography of architecture by Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe, among others.

“It’s not strictly commercial work – it was done on his free time,” he says. “It was not for magazines, but stuff he took because he thought he could make it interesting.”

That show will migrate to New York in the fall, to make room for exhibitions of drawings and models from the likes of west coast architects Neal Denari, Frank Gehry and Michael Rotondi.

Mount got his start 30 years ago at MoMA, which at the time was collecting – but not necessarily displaying – architectural sketches, models and photography.

“There was no market for them,” he says.

Today, he wants to change that. “I’ll be, perhaps, the only gallery in country focusing on architectural and design drawings,” he says. “I do see more and more auctions of them, and I want to make it a trend.”

Lovers of the freehand sketch will appreciate that, since the drawings are still relatively affordable. “From a collector’s point of view, to own a sketch from a prominent architect – for a non-exorbitant amount of money – is a wonderful opportunity,” he says.

In the meantime, A Modern Master: Photographs by Balthazar Korab opens tonight at Cesar Pelli’s Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

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