Creating designs that eventually disappear is both a relief and sad at the same time. It’s like rehearsing for a play for months and months, and then—poof!—the performance is over and only photos and memories are left. Exhibition graphics are similar.
Raymond Loewy. Lawn Chef Portable Grill. c.1950. Galvanized and enameled steel. The Museum of Modern Art, Architecture and; Design Purchase Fund
I’ve been thinking about how the Fourth of July is as much a monument to summertime culture as to the ideals of equality, and what a disappointment it would be if Independence Day didn’t happen in the summer.
Installation view of Holding Pattern by interboro Partners, winner of the 2011 Young Architects Program, 2011. Digital rendering courtesy of Interboro Partners
Each year, MoMA renews its commitment to experimental architecture and architectural display with a full-scale installation of a project chosen from a competition among virtually untried architects. In the galleries of the Museum, architecture collection masterworks and temporary exhibitions of computer- and hand-drawn architectural renderings, models, photographs, and films are regularly shown. But each year the outdoor spaces of MoMA PS1 provide a unique temporary outdoor gallery where emerging talents can turn projects and drawings into spaces and palpable experiences.
Markus Freitag and Daniel Freitag. Top Cat Bag (model F13). 1993. Used truck tarpaulins, seatbelts, and innertubes). Manufactured by Freitag, Zurich, Switzerland. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Lars Müller
As the Architecture and Design Objects Preparator, it’s not unusual for me to catch people in the galleries pointing at an object I’ve installed, saying something like, “I have one of those.” I suspect you’re not likely to hear this very often in the Painting and Sculpture Galleries, but it happens all the time on the third floor.
Zamp Kelp, Ortner, Pinter, Haus-Rucker-Co. Mind Expander/Flyhead Helmet, from the Environment Transformer project. 1968. On view in the exhibition Shaping Modernity: Design 1880–1980
What is it about the Haus-Rucker-Co. Mind Expander/Flyhead Helmet that so pleases everyone, I wonder? People love it. They just do. It is nice looking, with its translucent green double bubble mask, prismatic eyepieces, and groovy power pack, but the cool factor explodes once you realize what it is and what it’s meant to do.
Matthew Carter's Walker
MoMA has just acquired 23 digital typefaces for its Architecture and Design Collection. Some are of everyday use, like Verdana; others are familiar characters in our world, like Gotham, which was used in President Obama’s election campaign, or OCR-A, which we can find at the bottom of any product’s bar code; and others are still less common, but exquisitely resonant, like Walker or Template Gothic.
If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you may already have the sense that a lot of people are involved in putting together an exhibition. Curators, preparators, conservators, exhibition designers, registrars, security, and others all have critical roles to play in what you see at the Museum. But what happens when you take the same approach when putting together an exhibition app?
Tomasz Sarnecki. Solidarność (Solidarity). 1989
I was raised on Westerns—The Rifleman, Hondo, Wyatt Earp, Cheyenne, and Lawman, with plenty of John Ford and Sergio Leone thrown in, and I just adored those cowboys.
Rising Currents exhibition entrance.The exhibition's graphic design was made to appear similar to blueprints, the mode of graphic communication among architects and builders. Photo: Jason Mandella
Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront is a unique exhibition for its subject matter, but also because of the process of putting together the exhibition. As graphic designers, it was heartwarming to have the full support of both the curator and the exhibition designer throughout the entire process. We were particularly gratified to be given the opportunity to take take our creativity beyond the title wall and into the individual displays—yeah!
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