Museum Shows/ March
Boots: The Height of Fashion
The Museum at FIT
March 5th – April 6th 2013/ New York, NY USA
The Museum at FIT opens another exhibition dedicated to footwear, this time focusing on the evolution of boots and their eventual acceptance into modern fashion. It views boots as objects of expressive power through three significant sub-themes: sex, rebellion and status. Designers featured include Maison Martin Margiela, Norma Kamali, Yves St. Laurent and Marc Jacobs, and includes boots originally worn by fashion icons like Jane Holzer and Tina Chow. One highlight is a pair of boots designed by couturier Paul Poiret for his wife in 1913 that may have initiated the boot evolution.
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Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light
Museum of Modern Art
March 10th – June 24th 2013/ New York, NY USA
The Museum of Modern Art presents the first solo exhibition of Henri Labrouste’s work in the United States, further establishing his oeuvre’s importance in the evolution of modern architecture. The exhibition features more than 200 works, including original drawings, photographs, films, architectural models and fragments, documenting Labrouste’s impact particularly on his exploration of space in places of public assembly. His two reading rooms in Paris gave birth to the modern library and his other works to new materials and new building technologies. Labrouste is joined by works of his students and other great architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, in the exhibition.
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LOOS. Our Contemporary
MAK Vienna
March 13th – June 23rd 2013/ Vienna, Austria
MAK Vienna celebrates one of its own with LOOS. Our Contemporary, a retrospective on Austro-Hungarian born architect Adolf Loos. Developed by Loos expert Yehuda E. Safran, it uses as examples the work of Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray, Herzog & de Meuron, Frederick Kiesler and Rem Koolhaas to document the influence of Loos’ writings and projects on building culture of the past century. Safran explores and examines the everlasting efforts to find balance between inner and outer worlds on the basis of designs, models, furniture, photos, publications and interviews. Alongside Loos are works by contemporary Viennese artists and architects to round out the retrospective.
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Palaces for the People: Guastavino and America’s Great Public Spaces
National Building Museum
March 16th 2013 – January 24th 2014/ Washington, DC USA
The National Building Museum sheds light on the Guastavino’s – a virtually unknown family of Spanish immigrants whose tile vaults are found in the most iconic structures of the United States, including Grand Central Terminal, the Boston Public Library, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Nebraska State Capitol. The family, particularly Rafael Guastavino Sr. and his son Rafael, Jr., revolutionized American architectural design and construction with a tiling system that enabled construction of self-supporting arches that were lightweight, strong and attractive. The exhibition features large-scale photography, Guastavino company drawings and a full-scale tiled vault among others.
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Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design
Museum of Arts and Design
March 19th – September 15th 2013/ New York, NY USA
The Museum of Arts and Design introduces Against the Grain as part of MAD’s ongoing “Materials and Process” series, and here the focus is the most cutting-edge conceptual and technical trends in woodworking. The exhibition features close to 90 installations, sculptures, furniture and objects and emphasizes the way designers have employed postmodernist techniques and approaches into wood – such as deconstructing vessel shapes or using furniture shapes and techniques to create sculpture. It features 57 international artists and designers, including Maarten Baas, Sebastian Errazuriz, Wendell Castle and Pablo Reinoso.
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Stefan Sagmeister – The Happy Show
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
March 20th – June 9th 2013/ Los Angeles, CA USA
After traveling from Pennsylvania to Toronto, Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Showfinds a new temporary home in the first Los Angeles museum exhibition of the graphic designer’s work at the MOCA Pacific Design Center. The Happy Show recreates the designer’s mind during his sabbatical searching for happiness through meditation, cognitive therapy and mood-altering pharmaceuticals. It includes film, print, infographics, sculpture and interactive installations of his ten-year long investigation of happiness. To contextualize his research, Sagmeister gathered the social data of several psychologists, anthropologists and historians, which is presented alongside individual Sagmeister works, some custom-made for the exhibition.
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David Bowie Is
V&A
March 23rd – August 11th 2013/ London, UK
The V&A debuts the highly-anticipated first ever international retrospective on the career of David Bowie with unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive. The museum’s Theatre and Performance curators selected more than 300 objects from the archive that explore the creativity of the artist’s transformation and reinvention across five decades. Objects include handwritten lyrics, original costumes, fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs and his own instruments and album artwork.
