30/3/2012
The Utopian Impulse
SFMoMA, San Francisco
Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area. Some 65 works, including prints, drawings, photographs, documentary video, books, models, and ephemera
Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area. The first exhibition to consider Fuller's local design legacy. The presentation will feature some 65 works, including prints, drawings, photographs, documentary video, books, models, and ephemera representing some of Fuller's most iconic projects alongside those by Bay Area designers inspired by his philosophy. "Late in his life Fuller selected 13 designs for which he obtained U.S. patents and featured them in a portfolio called Inventions: Twelve Around One, to be marketed to art collectors," notes SFMOMA Acting Department Head/Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, who organized the presentation. "In learning more about Fuller, I've come to realize that the works in the portfolio shouldn't be considered designs. I prefer to view them as opportunities to rethink a more comprehensive and efficient way of living. In hindsight, it's probably fortunate that none of these projects were commercially successful, as it could have distracted from Fuller's idealism. This exhibition attempts to situate him as visionary and to present his revolutionary world view." (Image: Buckminster Fuller and Chuck Byrne, Building Construction/Geodesic Dome, United States Patent Office no. 2,682,235, from the portfolio Inventions: Twelve Around One, 1981)