Meanwhile the interior of the Pulitzer Foundation is a blissful achievement, in which de-emphasis and surprise go hand in hand.

His first public building in America, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, above, opened yesterday in St. Louis.

Chair and founder of The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis.

The museum was sited next to an existing Tadao Ando building for the Pulitzer Foundation and completed in 2003.

Mr. Sugimoto's photographs are on view through Oct. 14 at the Pulitzer Foundation, just steps away from their subject.

In July 2003 Mr. Sugimoto arrived in St. Louis to photograph the Pulitzer Foundation.

Mr. Sugimoto and Ms. Sontag were also friends, and she visited the Pulitzer Foundation.

The Pulitzer Foundation, which has limited hours, was once criticized for being an elitist tax shelter.

The doors are open - up to a point - to what may be the country's most unusual new art-viewing environment, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Each case is reviewed individually, and the Pulitzer Foundation was routinely granted its tax exemption as a private operating foundation.