At the End of the Century
dal 15/4/2000 al 24/9/2000
Segnalato da
15/4/2000
At the End of the Century
Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA, Los Angeles
The exhibition and its international tour are made
possible by Ford Motor Company.
At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of
Architecture began its international tour at the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan,
traveled to the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso
in Mexico City, and opened mid-June at the Museum
Ludwig/Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle in Cologne.
Following its MCA presentation, the exhibition
will travel to The Geffen Contemporary of The
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles,
from April 16 through September 24, 2000.
At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of
Architecture is organized by The Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The
exhibition was co-curated by Elizabeth Smith, the
MCA's James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, and Richard
Koshalek, former director of MOCA. This exhibition
marks Smith's first major exhibition at the MCA.
Significant additional support has been provided
by The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation; The Ron Burkle
Endowment for Architecture and Design Programs;
The Japan Foundation; Peter B. Lewis; Lenore S.
and Bernard A. Greenberg; Maeda Corporation; Mori
Building Company, Ltd.; and the Graham Foundation
for Advanced Studies in the Arts.
Taisei Corporation, Kajima Corporation, Obayashi
Corporation, Takenaka Corporation, and Shimizu
Corporation have also generously contributed to
the exhibition.
Support for the Chicago presentation of At the End
of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture
has been provided by the Illinois Arts Council, a
state agency; Seymour Persky; Rezmar Corporation;
Sandra and Jack Guthman; Judith Neisser; Chicago
Title Corporation/Chicago Trust Company; and U.S.
Equities Realty, Inc. Education programs have been
made possible through a generous grant from Polk
Bros. Foundation. Media support has been provided
by WBEZ 91.5FM.
Education programs have been made possible through
a generous grant from Polk Bros. Foundation.
The end of the twentieth century offers a unique
opportunity to look back at the architecture and
urbanism of the past 100 years, an era of
unsurpassed social, cultural, political, economic,
demographic and technological change that has
profoundly impacted contemporary life. From this
perspective, One Hundred Years of Architecture
draws upon recent, groundbreaking scholarship in
the field of architectural history and looks at
this century as the site of an enormous range of
competing and at times contradictory developments.
Conceived by Koshalek and co-organized with Smith,
One Hundred Years of Architecture was developed in
collaboration with an international advisory team
of architecture scholars: Zeynep Celik, associate
professor of architecture, New Jersey Institute of
Technology; Jean-Louis Cohen, director of the
Institut Français d'Architecture, Cité de
l'architecture, Paris; Beatriz Colomina,
architect, historian, theorist and professor in
the School of Architecture, Princeton University;
Margaret Crawford, professor, history and theory
program, Southern California Institute of
Architecture; Jorge Francisco Liernur, professor
of modern architectural history, Universidad de
Buenos Aires, and researcher, Instituto de Arte
Americano e Investigaciones Esteticas; Anthony
Vidler, chair of the department of art history,
UCLA; and Hajime Yatsuka, Tokyo-based architect
and theorist.
Noted Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry designed
elements of One Hundred Years of Architecture. The
MCA installation of the exhibition is designed by
Chicago architect John Vinci.
"The opportunity to present this exhibition in
Chicago is an exciting one. The city itself is
like a museum of twentieth century American
architecture, and the MCA's presentation of the
exhibition interweaves key developments in
Chicago's architectural history within an
international panorama," said Smith.
"Participation in the tour marks the institution's
first major involvement with architecture as a
component of our exhibition programming on an
unprecedented scale."
"At Ford Motor Company, we believe the arts enrich
our lives and our communities and help to promote
mutual understanding," said William Clay Ford,
Jr., chairman, Ford Motor Company. "We hope that
At the End of the Century: 100 Years of
Architecture will be especially inspiring as
communities and companies like ours seek out new
design concepts for sustainable life and work in
the next century."
Exhibition Contents
One Hundred Years of Architecture is
thematically-based in 21 sections but
chronologically organized. The 21 sections provide
an historical context for understanding
contemporary developments and examining how the
field of architecture has changed in response to
social, cultural, intellectual, political,
economic, and demographic factors during the
century. The exhibition contents include original
and newly-commissioned scale models, photographs,
drawings, architects' sketches, furniture,
artifacts, and three-dimensional objects.
Multi-media components include film clips and
large and small-scale projections of historical
film and video footage.
The thematic sections are: Grand Plans at the Turn
of the Century: Mapping a World Order; Colonialism
in the Early 20th Century; Manifestoes for a New
World; Visions of a New Order: The Russian
Avant-Garde; Modern Learning and Living at the
Bauhaus; The Rational Kitchen; Minimum vs. Maximum
Houses: Mass Housing and Villas in the 1920s and
1930s; The Garden City and the New Town:
Experiments in Europe, America and the Middle
East; The "International" Style: Modern
Architecture and Regional Influences; The Politics
of Monumentality in 1930s Architecture; World of
Tomorrow: The Future of Transportation;
Devastation and Reconstruction: The Rebuilding of
Cities; Mass-Produced Housing and Industry after
World War II; Creation of New Capitols in the
Second Half of the Century; The Architecture of
Ecology; Structural Expressionism; The Edge of
Utopia: Megastructures and Infrastructures; The
Rise of Theory in the 1960s and 1970s; Culture of
Spectacle: Cities of Fantasy, Tourism and
Entertainment; The House as an Aesthetic
Laboratory; and The Skyscraper: A 20th-Century
Building Type. This final section features nearly
60 examples of these urban monuments, including
several of Chicago's most noteworthy skyscrapers.
Excerpts from a broad range of films are
integrated directly within the exhibition. These
include Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), Le
Corbusier and Pierre Chenal's L'architecture
d'aujourd'hui (1931), Leni Riefenstal's Triumph of
the Will (1934-35), and Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1997
film on the buildings of Antonio Gaudi, as well as
a variety of clips from documentaries and period
news footage.
Related Programming
In conjunction with At the End of the Century: One
Hundred Years of Architecture, the MCA will offer
related programming, including a lecture series, a
film series, a symposium, a music event in the
galleries, an architectural history class,
off-site excursions, and a free family workshop.
The majority of the programming will be offered
between January and March 2000.
Companion Exhibition
As a companion to One Hundred Years of
Architecture, the MCA will present Material
Evidence: Chicago Architecture at 2000 in the
Turner Gallery on the Museum's fourth floor from
December 11, 1999 through March 5, 2000.
Guest-curated by Cynthia Davidson, Material
Evidence will investigate the use of materials as
a defining element in contemporary architecture,
focusing on current work in Chicago. The
exhibition will include commissioned
installations, as well as documentation of current
work by Chicago architects in the form of
three-dimensional models and other media that
illustrate different phases of projects and
different attitudes about the materials of
architecture.
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive,
352-page publication that brings new scholarship
to the field of architectural history. The book
features essays offering a diverse range of
viewpoints on topics covered in the exhibition by
Zeynep Celik, Jean-Louis Cohen, Beatriz Colomina,
Jorge Francisco Liernur, Elizabeth Smith, Anthony
Vidler and Hajime Yatsuka. Co-published with Harry
N. Abrams, Inc. and edited by MOCA Editor Russell
Ferguson, the book features 316 illustrations-148
in color-and includes newly-commissioned
photography reflecting the contemporary context of
some of the century's most significant buildings.
The catalogue is available at culturecounter, the
MCA's store and bookstore, in hardcover for $65.00
and softcover for $52.50.