In the late modernist area, art museums bypassed skyscrapers as the most prestigious architectural projects; they offered greater possibilities for innovation in form and more visibility. Pei established himself with his design for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (1973), which was praised for its imaginative use of a small space, and its respect for the landscape and other buildings around it. This led to the commission for one of the most important museum projects of the period, the new East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, completed in 1978, and to another of Pei's most famous projects, the pyramid at the entrance of Louvre Museum in Paris (1983–89). Pei chose the pyramid as the form that best harmonized with the Renaissance and neoclassical forms of the historic Louvre, as well as for its associations with Napoleon and the Battle of the Pyramids. Each face of the pyramid is supported by 128 beams of stainless steel, supporting 675 panels of glass, each .