The first exhibition of work by the German architect and designer Lilly Reich
(1885–1947), one of the most influential women practicing in her field during
the 1920s and 1930s, opens at The Museum of Modern Art on February 8, 1996.
Long known for her professional association with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,
Reich also maintained her own atelier, creating a professional career as a
designer of exhibitions, clothing, furniture, products, and interiors. The
exhibition, which runs through May 7, 1996, features forty-five drawings and
thirty documentary photographs of Reich's work, focusing on her installation
designs as well as furniture and product designs.
The material in the exhibition was drawn from the Museum's own collection of
Reich's work, which includes more than 800 sketches, working drawings, and
furniture designs and nearly 100 photographs of completed works and
installations. The only major archive of Reich's work, the collection is part
of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe bequest to the Museum in 1968. In addition to
the archival material, the exhibition features two furniture prototypes and one
architectural model made especially for this occasion. A linoleum floor
covering is an integral part of the installation, as it was in many of Reich's
exhibition installations and interiors.
Organized by Matilda McQuaid, Associate Curator, Department of Architecture
and Design, the exhibition traces Reich's collaborations with Mies while
revealing her contributions as a dynamic artist in her own right. As Ms.
McQuaid explains in the accompanying catalogue, "Reich was crucial to the
elevation of modern exhibition design as an art and as a discipline."
In her most eloquent displays, Reich allowed the materials and contents to act
as the primary design feature as well as the subject of the exhibition itself.
Reich derived and exercised much of her creative philosophy through her
association with the progressive German Werkbund, an organization dedicated to
promoting and upholding the highest standards of design and manufacture in
Germany. She was the first woman elected to the board in 1920, an
unprecedented appointment for a woman of that era. Reich assimilated the
Werkbund's principles, approaching design with the ideological intent of
improving society. She sought the overall integration of good design into
everyday life through the refinement of consumer display techniques, fashion,
furniture, and interiors.
Born in 1885, Reich was awarded one of her first commissions in 1911 for the
Wertheim Department Store. This project was succeeded in 1913 by a window
display for the pharmacy Elefanten-Apotheke, in which she showed the initial
signs of an essentialist sensibility by displaying medicine jars flanked by the
utensils used for making the medicine—an advertising technique exposing the
source of the products she was marketing. Ms. McQuaid fixes Reich's
professional turning point at the 1926 exhibition Von der Faser zum
Gewebe (From Fiber to Textile) at the fifteenth annual International
Frankfurt Fair: "Here, for the first time, Reich altered the prevailing custom
of presenting raw materials and techniques as a mere adjunct to the finished
product by choosing material and process as the essence of her installation.
This became the archetype for all of her future exhibitions."
Reich's official association with Mies van der Rohe began in 1927 at the
Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, the centerpiece of which was the
Weissenhofsiedlung (Weissenhof Housing Settlement), which showcased
modern architecture by an international array of architects and the work of the
most progressive Werkbund representatives. She was responsible for the design
of all the exhibition areas located in the central part of Stuttgart and
collaborated with Mies on the Plate-Glass Hall.
Reich's selection as artistic director and architect at Die Wohnung unserer
Zeit, deutsche Bauausstellung Berlin (The Dwelling in Our Time, German
Building Exposition, Berlin) in 1931, considered the designer's crowning
achievement, accorded her creative authority over five installations. Here she
demonstrated her talent in using the latest building materials to present some
of the newest achievements in the architecture and building trades. In 1932,
Reich was named director of the weaving studio and the interiors workshop of
the Bauhaus in Dessau.
The exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from Marshall S. Cogan,
with additional support from Lily Auchincloss. The accompanying publication is
made possible by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the
Fine Arts. Linoleum for the exhibition is provided by DLW
Aktiengesellschaft.
Publication
Lilly Reich: Designer and Architect, by Matilda
McQuaid with an essay by Magdalena Droste. 64 pages. 75 black-and-white
illustrations. Published by The Museum of Modern Art. Paperbound, $16.95,
distributed in the United States and
Canada by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York. Available at The MoMA Book Store.
Panel Discussion
"Lilly Reich: Women, Design, and Collaboration," moderated
by Mary McLeod, Associate Professor of Architecture, Columbia University.
Panelists are Dr. Rosemarie Haag Bletter, Professor, Art History and German,
City University of New York Graduate Center; Caroline Constant, Associate
Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Florida; Esther da Costa
Meyer, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Yale University; and
Franz Schulze, Professor of Art, Lake Forest College. Sunday, March 17,
12:00 noon. The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2, The Museum of Modern Art.
Tickets: $8.00; members $7.00; students and seniors $5.00. Available at the
Lobby Information Desk.
For further information or photographic materials please contact Alexandra
Partow, Department of Communications, 212/708–9750.
