Cultural
Partners in Design. Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson Exhibition
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 2017
Presented at first in Montreal and Boston, the exhibition travelled to Bielefeld to be shown in the only museum built by Philip Johnson in Europe, in a country – Germany – that was home to the two institutions that more than any other influenced the foundation of MoMA and its early exhibitions, the Werkbund and Bauhaus. UNA was invited to design the exhibition layout and offered the curatorial freedom to enrich the original show, curated by David Hanks, with artworks and loans that could emphasise the radicality of Johnson and Barr’s experimentations.
Announced in the first floor of the Kunsthalle with an introduction room, the exhibition unfolds on the galleries of the second floor, revolving around the central space - devoted to “Machine Art”, the radical 1934 MoMA exhibition curated by Barr and Johnson.
Approaching the gallery from the staircase (an exact copy of the stair Johnson previously designed for the Seagram building in NYC), one is confronted with a field of black pedestals each supporting one of the 24 loans from the original 1934 show. To emphasise on the scale of historic show and on the industrial nature of the pieces in display (that were deliberately chosen to educate the American eye to the beauty of mass-produced objects) the field is endlessly multiplied by two reflective surfaces. To expand upon the agenda underlying the original curatorial ambition, two elements added by UNA to the American version of “Partners in Design”: an unedited photo-gallery and a wallpaper. Whilst the gallery is devoted to the work of Ruth Bernhard, a photographer commissioned by Johnson to portray 402 objects for the 1934 catalogue. the wallpaper, depicts the flat-pack version of Machine Art as installed in one of the 25 venues where the exhibition travelled to “spread the gospel” of modernity.
With machine Art acting as a hinge for the whole exhibition, the Southern galleries unfold the collaboration between Barr and Johnson chronologically by reserving the first gallery to the objects included in their 1930 neighbouring apartments on 424 East 52nd Street; the following room to loans from Bauhaus/Werkbund (which they visited numerous times in the ‘30s) and the notorious 1932 “Modern Architecture” show; and finally, a niche to the rather didactic 1933 exhibition “Objects 1900 and Today”.
Image credits © Philip-Ottendörfer, ©UNA GmbH
Announced in the first floor of the Kunsthalle with an introduction room, the exhibition unfolds on the galleries of the second floor, revolving around the central space - devoted to “Machine Art”, the radical 1934 MoMA exhibition curated by Barr and Johnson.
Approaching the gallery from the staircase (an exact copy of the stair Johnson previously designed for the Seagram building in NYC), one is confronted with a field of black pedestals each supporting one of the 24 loans from the original 1934 show. To emphasise on the scale of historic show and on the industrial nature of the pieces in display (that were deliberately chosen to educate the American eye to the beauty of mass-produced objects) the field is endlessly multiplied by two reflective surfaces. To expand upon the agenda underlying the original curatorial ambition, two elements added by UNA to the American version of “Partners in Design”: an unedited photo-gallery and a wallpaper. Whilst the gallery is devoted to the work of Ruth Bernhard, a photographer commissioned by Johnson to portray 402 objects for the 1934 catalogue. the wallpaper, depicts the flat-pack version of Machine Art as installed in one of the 25 venues where the exhibition travelled to “spread the gospel” of modernity.
With machine Art acting as a hinge for the whole exhibition, the Southern galleries unfold the collaboration between Barr and Johnson chronologically by reserving the first gallery to the objects included in their 1930 neighbouring apartments on 424 East 52nd Street; the following room to loans from Bauhaus/Werkbund (which they visited numerous times in the ‘30s) and the notorious 1932 “Modern Architecture” show; and finally, a niche to the rather didactic 1933 exhibition “Objects 1900 and Today”.
| Project Title: | Partners in Design. Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson |
| Location: | Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany |
| Year: | 2017 |
| Status: | Completed |
| Program: | Exhibition Design and Curation |
| Scale: | M |
| Surface: | 529 sqm |
| Client: | Kunsthalle Bielefeld |
| Curator: | David A. Hanks |
| Partner: | Giulia Foscari |
| Team: | Barbara Materia (Project Architect), Daniel Springer, Hannah Demmin |
| Consultants: | Barry Bergdoll (MoMA), Sergio Zapata (Research), Gerrits (Curtains), Alluvial (Surfaces) |
Image credits © Philip-Ottendörfer, ©UNA GmbH
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