This article summarizes several art installations on display in New York City. It describes Grimanesa Amorós's LED "Bubbles" sculpture in the windows of 125 Maiden Lane, which features undulating LED tubing composed to look like bubbles. It also mentions Smiljan Radic's installation "Underground Passages" at the Queens Museum, consisting of tunnels and rooms below ground level for visitors to walk through. Finally, it briefly references an exhibition of works by Jesús Rafael Soto at the Whitney Museum of American Art, known for his works incorporating movement and light.

1. F O R M & f U N C T I O N
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F O R M & F U N C T I O N F O R M & F U N C T I O N
Doyle Lane: Clay Paintings, which opened in May
at Gerard O’Brien’s Landing at Reform Gallery,
shines a spotlight on the career of an overlooked
artist from the California modern era. Doyle Lane
worked as a ceramist, painter, and muralist af-
ter moving from Louisiana to Los Angeles in the
1950s to attend art school. As an African-Amer-
ican artist in a marketplace that had not yet em-
braced diversity (to say the least), Lane earned a
steady living through the years, often cold-calling
architects and designers to show his portfolio in
search of commissions for his mosaic tile work.
Having been advised by art school classmates to
avoid ceramics because, as Lane later put it,“that’s
mainly for white people,” he rejected this con-
ventional wisdom and established a reputation
in the field, developing a unique glazing process
that makes his pieces stand out to this day for
their shimmering colors. The master mid-century
ceramist Otto Natzler counted himself one of
the many admirers of Lane’s work, and was re-
portedly unwilling to consult with anyone else on
matters related to glazes. Among contemporary
collectors of ceramics, Lane’s geodesic clay pots
have earned him something of a cult following.
O’Brien, who deals in decorative arts through the
adjoining Reform Gallery, notes that Lane’s pot-
24 m o d e r n S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 25
tery tends to “draw people with an eye for design,
people who are ‘makers’ much like Doyle himself.”
The Landing’s exhibition showcases Lane’s oth-
er applications for his ceramic glazes. In the 1960s,
during the height of L. A.’s “Birth of the Cool”
period, he began to paint directly on clay tablets,
creating abstract geometric patterns with col-
ors intended to interact directly with natural
light. The show features around a dozen of these
pieces on loan from the California African
American Museum and several private collec-
tors. A filtered glass pane allows sunlight to
illuminate them during the day, as Lane originally
envisioned. The centerpiece, however, is a wall-
sized mosaic mural of handcrafted tiles glazed
in different chromatics of red, a perfect example
of Lane’s mastery of color and material. O’Brien
describes transplanting and reconstructing the
mural, which was originally commissioned by the
famed L. A. architect Welton Becket for a Pasa-
dena bank (now owned by Berkshire Hathaway),
as “the most audacious thing” he has ever done at
either the Landing or Reform Gallery. It will all be
worth it, however, if it elevates Doyle Lane to his
rightful place among the luminaries of the Cali-
fornia modern movement. reform-modern.com
—Adam Dunlop-Farkas
SmithsonianserarPhotoInternationalschool
Doyle Lane: Discovering
an Overlooked Ceramist of
Mid-century Los Angeles
JoeMeadephotoBenserarPhotoCaliforniaAfricanamericanmuseumMeganGagephoto

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Step into the gallery at the Pérez Art Museum
Miami (PAMM), and you are enveloped by song,
melodic and enchanting. Look up, and you will
see scale-model modern houses sitting high atop
skinny tree trunks, almost as if they were, in fact,
designed for very forward-thinking birds. All this
might seem to be homage to something romantic,
perhaps the way Case Study Houses appeared to
cantilever over the edge of the land, but in fact
they speak to far less idyllic moments in the his-
tory of architecture and social policy. Look closer,
and you’ll see the varied metal screening cover-
ing windows, favela style, and you’ll notice that
the wooden facades are mismatched—not glam-
orous at all. The birdhouses are the work of the
artist Simon Starling, whose projects are embed-
ded in research and offer surprising views of the
modern world.
The two mahogany structures atop the poles
were in fact designed after a failed public housing
project built in the 1960s in Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
At the time the houses were built, a kind of tropi-
cal optimism still reigned in Puerto Rico; even the
poorest residents left their houses open. But, says
Maria Elena Ortiz, a curatorial assistant at PAMM,
all that changed as the island’s crime rate rose, and
©SimonStarling/CourtesyoftheartistandCaseyKaplan,NewYork
A Bird’s-Eye View of
Modern Architecture
once-airy houses began to be turned into makeshift
fortresses. “It’s a very complex story in terms of the
history,” says Ortiz, who was also charged with
writing the essay for the brochure that accompa-
nies the installation of the birdhouses, a recent gift
to the museum from Dennis and Debra Scholl.
The English-born Starling (he now lives in Den-
mark) sought to capture the glories and indignities,
the successes and failures of such social programs
in his Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA (House for a
Songbird), which he created during a 2002 resi-
dency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Starling first came to this idea during an earlier res-
idency in Vienna where he was probing the works
of the musician Arnold Schoenberg; from that he
began to explore the connections between music
and architecture, which in turn led him to the Aus-
trian architect Simon Schmiderer, who—as Ortiz
points out—was also inspired by Schoenberg. And
in the 1960s, Starling discovered, Schmiderer had
designed a social housing project in Puerto Rico.
One thing clearly led to another.
Schmiderer’s housing, inspired in part by Lud-
wig Mies van der Rohe, was not only open in plan
but open to the elements, but within a decade, the
residents had begun to adapt the units to local cus-
toms and local needs, adding ornate screening and
enclosures, “producing a dramatic visual contrast
between the simple, rectangular doorways and
windows and their individually designed baroque
gates,” writes Ortiz in her explanatory essay.
Installed in a small gallery in the new Herzog
and de Meuron-designed PAMM (and on view
to September 14), Inverted Retrograde Theme USA
has a powerful presence—enhanced by the bird
melodies that sound like they are coming from
within. The recorded birdsong conjures up mem-
ories of sultry island days and nights where one
would be enveloped in the sounds of birds sing-
ing and frogs croaking, says Ortiz, herself a native
of Puerto Rico. “It is highly poetic.” In Starling’s
interpretation, “you wonder, who is being caged
now?” pamm.org
— Beth Dunlop

3. F O R M & f U N C T I O N
MarcoCoviPhoto
In Milan: Shooting for the
Stars, or at Least the Clouds
Lexus Design Awards:
The Antithesis of Speed
“I thought about how important it is to live with
nature, that now is the time to slow down and
be grateful for what we have,” says Nao Tamura,
theJapanese-bornbutBrooklyn-baseddesigner
known for her fine eye and delicate hand. Chal-
lenged with designing a project for Lexus, an
array of thoughts came into her head—many
of them about the meaning of cars, about their
necessary weight and desired-for speed. “I
wanted to change the viewpoint,” she says. “I
wondered what it would feel like to be a bug
looking up at a leaf.”
Tamura was one of three designers commis-
sioned by Lexus to produce major works during
Milan’s International Design Fair. She called her
project Interconnection. It is an exploration of
light and pattern—two giant mobiles made up
of ombre blue and white acrylic leaves strung to-
gether with thin metal rods and piano wire. “It’s
actually a very complex structure, but I wanted
to make it super low-tech,” she says. It is not
motorized or in any way mechanized but moves
with a slight nudge or even a breath. The entire
room-sized piece is able to be flat-packed in a
small box. (In the more high-tech department,
Tamura’s equally beautiful chandelier Flow(t)
and designed for Wonderglass was on view
elsewhere in Milan during Design Week.)
Besides Interconnection, the Lexus commis­
sioned pieces in Milan were Let’s Dance by
Italian designer Fabio Novembre and TRANS-
FORM, created by the Tangible Media Group
from the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology Media Lab led by Hiroshi Ishii, a
professor at MIT. In addition to the three
full-scale pieces, Lexus honored with tro-
phies twelve others whose concept designs
revolving around the theme of “curiosity”—
amongthemalightinspiredbyasoapbubbleand
a building kit—were selected from more than a
thousand entries from seventy-two countries.
lexus-int.com/design-events/2014.html
—Beth Dunlop
At Sophienholm A Look at Kay Bojesen's Life and work
Best known for “putting a smile on Danish design,” Kay Bojesen was recognized early on
as one of the most skilled Danish silversmiths of his generation and later merited broader
acclaim as one of the greatest Danish designers of the twentieth century. His classic Grand
Prix cutlery of 1938 earned Milan’s international design award in 1951 and is still in produc-
tion today, while his artful wooden toy designs brought him international attention. His early
designs reflected arts and crafts and art nouveau traditions, while later works veered toward
lyrical functionalism. All the while, his creations were deeply rooted in the Danish design
tradition he promoted with his 1931 co-founding of Copenhagen’s Den Permanente art gal-
lery. By the time of his death in 1958 Bojesen had designed more than two thousand works
in materials as diverse as porcelain, tin, bamboo, and melamine. Many are in production
even now, with his granddaughter Susanna Bojesen Rosenqvist executing works in silver and
steel under the company name Kay Bojesen Aps, and Rosendahl Design Group A.S., in close
collaboration with the Bojesen family, producing and marketing his wooden figurines under
the name Kay Bojesen Denmark. This presentation, at Sophienholm on the northern outskirts
of Copenhagen, is Denmark’s largest ever exhibition of the designer’s work (June 28 to Sep-
tember 21) and draws together a representative and diverse array of objects. sophienholm.dk
—Sara Spink
Konstantin Grcic Takes the stage at Vitra
Summer travelers to Europe (especially those going to Art Basel and Design Miami/Basel) might
be well-advised to take a short detour to Weil am Rhein, Germany, to the Vitra Design Muse-
um, where an exhibition devoted to the work of Konstantin Grcic is on view through September
14. The prolific and brilliant Grcic (his new work was much admired at this year’s International
Design Festival in Milan) has developed a series of large-scale installations depicting his own
vision of the future (this part of the exhibition includes an almost 100-foot-long panoramic
mural) to go along with a somewhat encyclopedic look at his wide output—thus the exhibition
name of Konstantin Grcic—Panorama. Along with specific work, Grcic’s furniture and lighting, the
exhibition probes his process, showing examples of objects that have inspired the designer who
was born in 1965 in Munich.
Named Designer of the Year for Design Miami in 2010, Grcic has produced a body of work
that ranges from chairs and stools to lighting to tableware and other domestic objects. The ex-
hibition will move on to Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, where it will be
on view from February through May 2015 with other destinations yet to be determined.
— Beth Dunlop
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NaoTamuraKonstantinGrcic/Panorama©KGID/©vitraKayBojesen
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Scoping out salone
It was mid-afternoon of a balmy April day, the fourth day of
Milan’s massive annual International Design Fair, and out
at the Salone del Mobile, the fairgrounds were abuzz. Mat-
teo Renzi, the handsome young prime minister of Italy, was
paying a visit. A crowd gathered at the top of the escalators
expectantly, as a smiling Renzi rode up to visit the hall to
see some of Italy’s finest furniture companies showcasing
their wares.
The visit had larger significance than politics alone. Italy is
a nation of artisans and fabricators, but in recent years, the
country (like many others) has been plagued by a stagnant
economy, in some ways exacerbated by a somewhat contro-
versial government, which meant that Renzi’s appearance at
the Salone signaled better days ahead. “In Italy, we believe
that design is value, that quality is value” says Claudio Luti,
who is not only president of the design company Kartell but
also heads Cosmit, the consortium of Italian furniture manu-
facturers that mounts Salone.
Each year designers, architects, collectors, showroom
owners, gallery operators, journalists, scholars, and aficiona-
dos descend on Milan by the thousands. The Salone itself
is a prime destination for most. This year a special exhibi-
tion, Where Architects Live, offered a multimedia glimpse at
the personal homes of architects Shigeru Ban, Mario Bellini,
Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, Zaha Hadid, Marcio Ko-
gan, Daniel Libeskind, and Studio Mumbai/Bijoy Jain.
It is almost axiomatic that at the fair itself, lovers of con-
temporary design make a beeline for Halls 16 and 20, where
brands (many though not all of them Italian) ranging from
Artek to Zanotta can be seen. (Other modern and contem-
porary brands can be found elsewhere at the Salone, but
these two halls offer the concentrated study of what’s new
and what has endured.) Among the many standouts: Patri-
cia Urquiola’s rugs for Gandia Blasco and Artek’s launch of
new work by Konstantin Grcic and reinterpretations by Hella
Jongerius of some of Artek’s Alvar Aalto staples.
The celebration of contemporary design spills out from the
fair across all of Milan, with entire districts (Brera, Tortona,
Lambrate) devoted to showcasing design, often, though not
always, from younger designers. The venerable Milan design
guru Rossana Orlandi showed an array of fascinating (and
sometimes provocative) work at both her gallery in an old
tie factory, and in the separate Untold, which took over the
historic Museo Bagatti-Valsecchi. Orlandi’s acute eye is leg-
endary, and this year was no exception with works from the
Lebanese duo known as Bokja, the Viennese firm of Lobmeyr,
and the Japanese-born Yukiko Nagai, just to name three.
Others—among them Hermès and Established and Sons—
similarly occupied venerable Milan palazzos and other land-
mark buildings to display often remarkable new work. At the
Palazzo Clerici, for example, one could see edgy new work
from Formafantasma for Gallery Libby Sellers using cooled
lava as a primary material. The Dutch brand Moooi, on the
other hand, took over a modern factory space and then
reshaped it with Massimo Listri’s giant-sized photos of
palazzo interiors shaping the spaces.
“It goes from the young to the stars,” Luti says. “I like to
think that it is the best in the world.”
­—Beth Dunlop

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Art to Walk Into, Under, Around, or Through
AmorosStudio©2014SmiljanRadicStudio©EstatEofJesÚsrafaelsoto
LED "Bubbles" by GrimanesA Amorós
The graceful undulations of LED tubing compose a striking display in the windows of
125 Maiden Lane at the heart of New York City’s financial district. The latest sculpture
in Grimanesa Amorós’s most recent body of work, the installation plays on the artist’s
signature “bubble” sculptures while providing a new mode of exploring her longstand-
ing interest in lighting effects and diffusive materials. For Amorós, the work conveys
ties to her birthplace of Peru, with bubble shapes recalling man-made islands in Lake
Titicaca and LED tubes referencing distinctive reeds that grow in the northern reaches
of the country. Such references inspire her intuitive process of formulating site-specific
works. Here, a structural grid against the back wall echoes the building’s monumental
windows and acts as a spine for the seemingly weightless swirls of light. A dynam-
ic pattern activates LEDs in four shades of white and a golden yellow. At night, the
sweeping and curving work reflects off the marble walls, steel ceiling, and windows to
create a hypnotic illumination. grimanesaamoros.com
—Sara Spink
SMILJAN RADIC'S Serpentine Galleries Commission
Architect Smiljan Radic becomes the fourteenth architect commissioned by the Ser-
pentine to design a pavilion outside the entrance to its Kensington Gardens gallery.
Conceived in 2000 by director Julia Peyton-Jones, the Pavilion project has presented
works by highly prestigious architects and become an important site for architectural
experimentation. Radic’s design references his earlier work, much of which resides in
his native Chile, but also speaks to the architectural traditions of England. “The Ser-
pentine 2014 Pavilion is part of the history of small romantic constructions seen in
parks or large gardens, the so-called follies, which were hugely popular from the end
of the sixteenth century to the start of the nineteenth,” Radic says. His semi-trans-
parent cylindrical structure atop large quarry stones resembles a shell and encloses
a flexible, multipurpose social space with a café. During its four-month tenure (June
26 to October 19), it will provide a venue for the Serpentine’s Park Nights series—
interdisciplinary events combining art, poetry, music, film, literature, and theory. The
pavilion itself will offer additional enticement for visitors at night, Radic says—the
amber-tinted light showing through the translucent shell “will attract the attention of
passers-by like lamps attracting moths.” serpentinegalleries.org
—Sara Spink
A Posthumous work by Jesús Rafael Soto in Houston
Almost ten years after its commission, a twenty-six-hundred-square-foot site-specific work
designed by the late Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005), an iconic contributor
to the kinetic art movement, has been completed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The
artist first experimented with kinetic works in three dimensions in the late 1950s, and this
piece stands as his final contribution to the Penetrable series he began in 1967—indeed, it
is his last work. Of the twenty-five or thirty Penetrables Soto designed, the Houston piece is
unprecedented in its size and complexity and is one of few Soto planned for interior display.
It is also a rare work he designed for a specific site and is the only one expressly intended
for (relatively) long-term installation (it is up until September 1). Architect Paolo Carrozzino
and producer Walter Pellevoisin oversaw a team of artisans and ironworkers in Houston and
Vielle-Tursan, France, to realize this piece, which is comprised of twenty-four thousand
hand-painted and tied PVC (polyvinyl chloride) tubes. The work hangs two stories from ceil-
ing to floor and attains its full realization only with the participation of the viewer, who, walk-
ingthroughit,becomesabsorbedinatactile,optical,andphysicallyresponsiveenvironment.
An accompanying exhibition of eight pieces typifying the various phases and series of Soto’s
careerhelpsviewersappreciatetheHoustonPenetrableastheconsummationofthethemes
and concepts he investigated throughout his career. mfah.org
—Sara Spink
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Arik Levy at the Atomium in Brussels
As part of Art Brussels 2014, the Atomium has organized an
exhibition of work by multidisciplinary Israeli artist Arik Levy that
includes an original sculpture commissioned by the Atomium
Foundation for permanent display near its iconic Expo ’58 build-
ing. That structure’s design for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair repre-
sents a molecule of crystal magnified 165 billion times, reflecting
the era’s pervasive faith in science. Levy’s complementary work
evolves from his RockGrowth series, resulting in a piece that is
harmonious with but conceptually different from the Atomium.
Levy explains that the mid-century building is similar to a “cage
structure,” with a regular cubic organization, whereas his creation
adopts an opposite principle: arms and facets radiate from a cen-
tral core. Made in stainless steel and painted red, RockGrowth 808
Atomium establishes a dialogue with and activates its compan-
ion structure. The mirror-polished ends of the work’s “arms” re-
flect its surroundings as though they emanate from within, while
the sculpture itself is repeatedly reproduced in the Atomium’s
spheres in a manner that Levy intends to “be forever dynamic and
animate the piece endlessly.” ariklevy.fr atomium.be
—Sara Spink
at The Bisazza Foundation, Candida HŐfer
German photographer Candida Höfer personally selected the
more than twenty large-format photographs on display at the
Bisazza Foundation for Design and Contemporary Architecture in
Vicenza, Italy (to July 27). The artist’s “portraits” of public spac-
es—the interiors of museums, libraries, archives, offices, banks,
and theaters in locations ranging from Seville and Paris to Rio de
Janeiro—comprise the Bisazza Foundation’s first classic and con-
temporary architecture show, which Höfer co-curated. Her images
capture an extraordinary amount of detail without any measure
of digital enhancement, involving long exposure times illuminat-
ed only by ambient light. Her decision to photograph spaces with-
out human occupants, the artist explains, in fact allows her sub-
jects “to tell more about people, what they do for them and what
people have been doing to them.” By presenting these interiors in
their solitary splendor, Höfer creates an opportunity for viewers to
quietly contemplate and establish a personal relationship with the
portrayed spaces. fondazionebisazza.it
—Sara Spink
Light Invisible: Helen Pashgian at LACMA
In her first solo exhibition at a major museum, Helen Pashgian has created
a large-scale installation fully appreciable only through viewer participa-
tion. Twelve illuminated, two-part columns define an immersive environ-
ment that builds on Pashgian’s extensive body of work experimentally with
diverse materials and lighting effects. A pioneer of Southern California’s
light and space movement in the 1960s, the artist and her colleagues looked
to new industrial and commercial products, like surfboards and custom cars,
for novel source materials—coated glass, polyester resin, and plastics, to
name a few. For LACMA’s Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible (to June 29), the art-
ist heated large sheets of acrylic until she could wrap the softened material
around wooden molds. The internal forms become evident only upon close
inspection. The columns, Pashgian says, are “presences that do not reveal
everything at once. One must move around to observe the changes.” Appre-
ciating this “phenomenon of constant movement” is to engage “with a lan-
guage unlike any other. It touches on this mysterious part beyond which the
eye cannot go but beyond which the eye struggles to go.” With a gift from
Carol Bayer Sager, LACMA acquired the finished work, which will travel to
the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville this fall. lacma.org
—Sara Spink
ChristopheLicoppePhoto/BefocusCandidaHöfer©HelenPashgian/©2014MuseumAssociates/LACMA

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All the Best
Inventions
Dream Cars in Atlanta
In search of a (vicarious) thrill ride? Make your way to the
High Museum in Atlanta, where curator Sarah Schleun-
ing’s exhibition Dream Cars: Innovative Design, Visionary
Ideas is on view until September 7. Featuring some of the
rarest and most imaginative automobiles ever built, the
show includes seventeen “concept” cars from the 1930s
to 2001—cars that represented (and represent) the amaz-
ing possibilities for the future of driving.
Built by automakers, custom coachbuilders, and indepen-
dent designers, most concept cars are never intended for
series production but rather are the testing ground for inno-
vations that might find expression in automobiles produced
decades later. William Stout’s 1936 Scarab, for instance
(which he envisioned as essentially a living room on wheels),
could be considered the grandfather of today’s minivan, while
“L’Oeuf électrique,” a small, almost spherical electric “bubble
car” designed in 1942 by Frenchman Paul Arzens for his per-
sonal use during the German occupation of Paris, anticipated
the postwar boom for fuel-efficient mini-cars.
Chrysler’s sleek 1940 Thunderbolt offered a radical aero-
dynamic aluminum body, hidden headlights, enclosed
wheels, a retractable one-piece metal hardtop (controlled
by push buttons on the dashboard, which was leather-
covered and featured round, etched Lucite dials), and an
experimental semiautomatic overdrive transmission. Mech­
anical engineer Norman Timbs hand-built his gorgeous 1947
Special, a futuristic doorless roadster capable of more than a
hundred miles an hour. General Motors’ 1953 Firebird I was
the first gas turbine-powered automobile built and tested in
the U.S. In essence a wingless jet plane for the road, it never
took off for myriad technical reasons. Then, there was the
three-wheeled Runabout with a built-in shopping cart.
These are just a few of the autos that make up the
story told in Dream Cars. In addition to the cars, the
exhibition includes conceptual drawings, patents, and
scale models. The accompanying catalogue is gorgeously
illustrated and packed with every bit of information you
could possibly want about these dream machines, built
and unbuilt. If you’re a car person and can’t get to the show,
the book alone is a must-have. highmuseum.org
—Eleanor Gustafson
F O R M & f U N C T I O N
JewishDesigners'legacyinSanFrancisco
A new exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in
San Francisco focuses on the impact Jewish designers, ar-
chitects, and patrons had on the spread of modernism in
the mid-twentieth century. The show—Designing Home:
Jews and Midcentury Modernism, on view to October 6—fea-
tures the work of more than thirty-five designers, from the
American-born Henry Dreyfuss and George Nelson to
émigrés like Richard Neutra, Anni Albers, and Gertrud and
Otto Natzler. Curated by Doald Albrecht, curator of archi-
tecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York,
the exhibition explores the proliferation of modernist tenets
from across the Atlantic Ocean throughout America and
makes use of domestic objects and architecture to illustrate
the acceptance of the style by corporate leaders and mid-
dle-class consumers. The exhibition highlights key projects,
institutions, and individuals that encouraged this transmis-
sion of avant-garde styles to the broader public, including
MoMa’s early Bauhaus exhibition and Good Design pro-
gram and the Walker Art Center’s Idea House.
The beautifully illustrated catalogue continues the exami-
nation of the network of designers and the diverse cultural
institutions that connected them. Asheville, North Carolina’s
Black Mountain College, Pond Farm in California, Chicago’s
Institute of Design, MoMa, the Walker Art Center in Min-
neapolis, and Arts and Architecture magazine are credited
with supporting Jewish designers and integrating their work
into the American mainstream so effectively that, by 1961,
Jewish architect Percival Goodman could proclaim that the
dividing line in America was not between different races
and religions, but between a culturally progressive avant-
garde and a retrograde rearguard. “Avant-garde,” he noted,
“belongs neither to Gentile nor Jew, but is the plight of every-
body who must rebel in order to breathe again, and in that
number there are numerous Jews.” thecjm.org
—Katy Kiick

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F O R M & f U N C T I O N
©WinifredNicholsonTrusteesCourtesyof PabloCanoDeSotoBrownPhoto©VictoriaandAlbertMuseum,London
Preserving British ideals in Sheffield
Recording Britain presents the moving results of Sir Kenneth
Clark’s prescient project of the same name, initiated at the out-
set of World War II. More than ninety artists, both profession-
al and amateur, received commissions to create a visual record
of buildings, landscapes, and lifestyles deemed vulnerable to
the impact of war. These works, made between 1939 and 1943,
reflect the ideals Britain fought to preserve, while also docu-
menting the visible effects of the country’s progress and de-
velopment. On tour to the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield (to
November 2) from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the
exhibition includes work by some of Britain’s finest watercolor
painters, such as John Piper, Barbara Jones, and Olive Cook. In
addition, there are contemporary works embodying the proj-
ect’s original initiative, including paintings and photographs by
Conrad Atkinson, David Nash, Keith Arnatt, and Ingrid Pollard.
museums-sheffield.org.uk/museums/millennium-gallery
—Sara Spink
Dulwich Picture Gallery
The Dulwich Picture Gallery’s exhibition Art and Life: Ben
Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wal-
lis, William Staite Murray, 1920–1931 focuses on the pro-
lific output of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, two of the UK’s
most important twentieth-century painters, during their ten
year marriage. Often painting the same subject, Winifred
shone as a colorist and Ben indulged an interest in form.
Art and Life offers an opportunity to see the couple’s paint-
ings—many rarely seen or previously unexhibited—side by
side, as well as those of their friends and contemporaries
Christopher Wood and Alfred Wallis, with whom they often
worked. The Nicholsons also influenced the avant-garde ce-
ramics of potter William Staite Murray, also included in the
show. Art historian and exhibition curator Jovan Nicholson,
who is also the Nicholsons’ grandson, chose to organize the
show (on view to September 21) by location, the better to highlight
the juxtapositions, influences, and affinities between the artists.
dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
—Sara Spink
In Fort Lauderdale, Cuban Art
The Miami Generation: Re-
visited, organized by Nova
Southeastern University
Mu­se­um of Art in Fort Lau-
derdale, re-examines a pio-
neering exhibition presented
in 1983 by the now defunct
Cuban Museum of Arts and
Culture. The Miami Genera-
tion: Nine Cuban American
Artists recognized a vibrant
artistic community that
played a role in establishing
South Florida as a focal point
of international art and cul-
ture. The show featured work by nine emerging artists who were
among the first generation of Miami’s Cuban exile community to
obtain artistic education in the United States. Thirty years later,
its reincarnation (July 11 to September 7) showcases recent works
by the original participants. The presentation explores the evolu-
tion of each artist and the synthesis of cultural forces in their
works, even as many of the pieces address themes familiar from
the original show: exclusion, inclusion, and sexual identity politics.
moafl.org
—Sara Spink
In Honolulu, Art Deco Hawai'i
Assembling an array of paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and
decorative objects from the interwar period, the Honolulu Mu-
seum of Art presents Art Deco Hawai'i (July 3 to January 11,
2015), an exhibition that challenges conventional interpretations
of Hawaii’s artistic production from the 1920s to 1940s. What
exhibition curator Theresa
Papanikolas describes as a
“schematized visual language…
developed and perpetuated to
serve specific cultural, politi-
cal, and commercial ends”
contradicts notions of an isolat-
ed, conservative group creating
diluted works dimly reflective
of the avant-garde. Instead,
the adaptation of Hawaiian
culture into the international
art deco style fostered the
country’s reputation as a tour-
ist destination and established
a visual legacy that endures in
souvenirs and island-inspired
fashion. honolulumuseum.org
—Sara Spink
Expressions of Both Time and Place

7. F O R M & f U N C T I O N
36 m o d e r n S U M M E R 2 0 1 4
A Museum in Tennessee Looks at Life's Cycle
©2014ElizabethFelicellaPhotography
Knoxville dreams big
Knoxville is located in the center of the Great Valley in east-
ern Tennessee, nestled in the foothills of the Great Smoky
Mountains. The city’s location at the headwaters of the
Tennessee River and its railroad connections made it a prize
fought for during the Civil War. It soon became the epicen-
ter of the region’s economy and cultural history. In the last
ten years, the population has nearly doubled, and the city
seems determined to continue to thrive.
In 1990 renowned museum architect Edward Larrabee
Barnes designed the four-story steel and concrete Knox-
ville Museum of Art (KMA) overlooking the site of the
1982 World’s Fair in downtown Knoxville. The reductive
cube building clad in locally quarried pink marble serves
as a foundation to contextualize the area’s rich cultural
legacy and promote regional artists. On the occasion of its
twenty-fifth anniversary, internationally acclaimed glass
artist Richard Jolley was commissioned by long-time KMA
supporters Ann and Steve Bailey to create a monumental
permanent installation. Jolley was given complete artistic
freedom to develop the ideas and imagery for the installa-
tion. The work took over five years to create, three months
to install, and cost more than $1 million.
Cycle of Life: Within the Power of Dreams and the Wonder
of Infinity spans the entire length of the KMA’s Great Hall
(more than one hundred feet) and is one of the largest glass
and steel sculptures in the world. Weighing more than seven
tons, this tour de force required massive reinforcement of the
building’s steel structure and the installation of new lighting
controls to illuminate it. The piece is an epic seven-part nar-
rativeportrayingtheprogressionoflife.“Ilookedatoldblack-
and-white films with painted backgrounds and the actor in
the foreground to grasp the idea of filling the frame or space,”
Jolley says, adding, “I felt this space demanded monumental
scale—I have seen ten by ten foot paintings on the wall, and
they floated like small postage stamps so I knew scale was
critical.” “Cycle of Life is a game-changer for the museum—
it reveals Richard’s exceptional artistic rigor and vision—an
aesthetically stunning masterwork that is also an engineer-
ing marvel,” says KMA director David Butler.
The first six stages, three representing youth on one side
and three representing maturity on the other, flank a stair-
case to the mezzanine; the seventh phase, “Sky,” hangs
from the ceiling. Suggestive of the unknown and likened to
both the structure of DNA and the cosmos, it represents
the future.
There is no denying that the future looks bright for the
city of Knoxville—certainly there seem to be nothing but
blue skies ahead. knoxart.org
While you’re in town:
The McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture in
Knoxville has collections and exhibitions in anthropology,
archaeology, geology, natural history, and decorative arts.
The Tennessee Theatre, which opened in 1928 as a grand
movie palace with Spanish-Moorish designs by the once-
famous Chicago firm of Graven and Mayger, was restored
in 2005 and is now the city’s leading performance arts
center. Legend has it that Ironwood Studios, a former bus
repair depot turned studio was an old moonshine distill-
ery. Metal artist Preston Farabow and woodworker John
McGilvray established Ironwood in 2006. Farabows has
builtanameforhimselfwiththeNASCARtrophieshecrafts
on-sitefrommetalpartsthrownoffbythecarsduringarace.
mcclungmuseum.utk.edu tennesseetheatre.com
—Danielle Devine

8. 38 m o d e r n S U M M E R 2 0 1 4
F O R M & f U N C T I O N
HermèsMishaKahnphotocourtesyofmadDanielAdricPhoto
Hermès introduces Petit h to America
Inspired by contemporary artists reusing discarded materials to form unique artworks, the
venerable French manufacturer of luxury goods Hermès has created Petit h, a collection of
exceptional objects made from discarded materials and objects salvaged from the compa-
ny’s workrooms. Using this concept known as “upcycling," Hermès craftsmen have conjured
a change tray in the form of a sports car in vivid pink alligator skin, a model sailboat with
an exquisite silk sail, a mirror frame embedded with metal bits and pieces from hardware, a
crystal bowl mounted on five wine glass stems, and an alligator-skin tablet case with leather
straps. Some of these unique objects are being presented for the first time in the United
States by Pascale Mussard, Petit h’s artistic director, who also happens to be the great-great-
great granddaughter of the saddle maker Thierry Hermès. The introductory American event
is being held at the Schindler House in West Hollywood on June 11. This private event is a
preview of the thirty-seven hundred pieces that will be available for sale online and at the
Petit h concept shop at the Hermès South Coast Plaza boutique in Costa Mesa from June 13
through June 29. hermes.com/petith
—Cynthia Drayton
Celebrating the Legacies
of Work Made by Hand
Reminder: NYC Makers at MAD
NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial, an exhibition that spotlights the creative
communities thriving across New York’s boroughs today opens on July 1
(to October 12) at the Museum of Arts and Design. It’s the first exhibi-
tion to be organized under the leadership of MAD’s new director Glenn
Adamson (see MODERN, Spring 2014, pp. 132-137) and will showcase
the work of approximately one hundred highly inventive artisans, art-
ists, and designers who create objects or environments through exqui-
site workmanship and skill. Exemplifying the museum’s ongoing com-
mitment to craftsmanship across all creative fields, the exhibition will
serve as a platform not only for makers who typically display their work
in a museum setting, but also those who operate behind the scenes.
madmuseum.org
In 1984 Cartier, the luxury jewelry maker, established the Cartier Foundation for
Contemporary Art, making it the first European company to support and raise
public awareness of the world’s great artistic talents through direct commission-
ing. Today, the Cartier Foundation has an impressive and rapidly developing col-
lection of over thirteen hundred works by 350 artists from forty countries.
To commemorate its thirtieth anniversary, the Cartier Foundation has invited
the public to a range of exhibitions, performances, and other events—which con-
tinue through March 2015—at its Jean Nouvel-designed headquarters in Paris.
The first part of the celebration presents the exhibition Vivid Memories featuring
iconic pieces marking events in the foundation’s history, including images from
its archives, photographs, videos, and film by artists such as Marc Newson, Ca
Guo-Qian, Peter Halley, and others. One of the highlights on David Lynch’s giant
LED screen is a live and impromptu performance at the foundation in 1990 of the
Velvet Underground with the late Lou Reed. This first part of the anniversary cel-
ebration can be seen through September.
From October through March, part two will address the past and the future
with an interactive scenography that will combine the visual and performing arts
using new technologies produced by the architectural and design studio of New
York’s Diller Scofidio and Renfro. foundation.cartier.com
—Cynthia Drayton
Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art celebrates its 30th anniversary

9. 40 m o d e r n S U M M E R 2 0 1 4
F O R M & f U N C T I O N
Sinapearsontextileskirkbydesignjamesshanksphoto
Textiles and the City:
Design by Inspiration
In 1934 New York City opened an elevated rail system spanning Manhattan’s Lower
West Side. The freight line was an integral part of the city’s transport of goods
and materials until the rails were closed in 1980; but after some thirty dormant
years the structure reopened in 2009 as the High Line—a public park hovering
thirty feet above the busy streets. Today visitors to the High Line can mingle with
indigenous plants, contemporary art, local cuisine, and of course the city itself. It
is these elements that combined to inspire Sina Pearson’s rhythmic new Walking
the High Line series of fabrics. The four patterns are geometric and call to mind
everything from the railroad ties underfoot (in Tracks) and the surrounding layers
of square and rectangular glazing (in Windows) to the tall buildings in the distance
(Skyline) poking above the overlapping grid of modernist structures (in Facades).
The patterns appear in four color families combining the neutral grays of the metro-
politan landscape with bursts of color taken from the High Line’s array of wildflowers;
the adaptive reuse of the High Line also inspired Pearson’s interest in sustainable
design and use of recycled materials in the fabric. sinapearson.com
­—Katy Kiick
New York City isn’t the only source of railway-inspired design. UK-based Kirkby De-
sign has taken the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the London Underground
to introduce its Underground Collection, which re-creates five iconic fabric designs
taken from the London Transport Museum. The original thick velvety moquette
fabrics were created under the direction of Frank Pick, publicity manager and lat-
er managing director of London Transport from 1907 to 1940. Pick commissioned
innovative designs for everything from station architecture, maps, and signage to
promotional posters and the fabric on the seats. To this end he enlisted the talents
of artists like Marion Dorn, Paul Nash, and Enid Marx, who was told that in addition
to looking well in artificial lighting, the material should “look fresh at all times, even
after bricklayers had sat on it.” Pick’s legacy of a well-designed commuter fleet en-
dured, and today’s re-creations draw from designs for 1930s buses, 1950s Green
Line coaches, and tubes from the 1970s and 1990s. The goals for today’s fabrics
are the same: innovative geometric designs in bold, contemporary color palettes,
and of course the ability to hide wear, tear, and bricklayer’s dust. kirkbydesign.com
­—Katy Kiick
Another collaboration bringing the urban environment indoors is the new Grethe
Sørensen Collection produced for Wolf-Gordon. The Danish Sørensen combines
her traditional weaving expertise with an extensive knowledge of digital photog-
raphy and technology. She has developed a “random weave” method that com-
bines the two mediums by translating photographic pixels into thread. Her images
of light-filled cityscapes are abstracted into delicate, ethereal compositions effect-
ing the look of unfocused light. Millions of Colors, the upholstery fabric in her new
line, is aptly named. Sørensen’s random weave technique arranges pixels of basic
colors to create endless gradations that gradually shift into each other. While Sø-
rensen’s work is undeniably modern, it certainly owes a debt to the study of light
and color in impressionist painting and even the beauty of chance in surrealism.
Wolf-Gordon, an American company, released Sørensen’s line in March, which in-
cludes three versions of the Millions of Colors fabric and twenty-six colorways of
her three wall-covering patterns. wolfgordon.com
­—Katy Kiick

10. 42 m o d e r n S U M M E R 2 0 1 4
F O R M & f U N C T I O N
Gaetanopesce'soffice(3)Bottom:SebastianPirasPhoto
Gaetano Pesce: Homage to
the Master in a Major Rome
Retrospective
“I find him more interesting than any other industrial designer,” says the collector
Alberto Eiber of Gaetano Pesce. “Everything is an experiment and unique. It is
purposeful that each piece is imperfect and irregular.” Eiber, who lives in Miami
Beach, is a major collector of Pesce’s work, both large and small, and has followed
his career for several decades.
This summer, a major retrospective devoted to Pesce's work will open at
MAXXI, the Roman museum devoted to art and architecture of the twenty-first
century. The exhibition will include some eighty pieces conceived and executed
during Pesce’s full career, from the 1960s, when, starting in his student years in
Venice, he was part of the collective Grupo N, to the present. He has lived in New
York since 1980 and before that, resided in Paris for fifteen years.
Pesce’s work ranges from architecture, interior design, and urban planning to
industrial and furniture design and art. It is generally figurative (if in an abstract
way) and often fulsome. He has long used unexpected materials and ideas to
explore difficult and emotionally charged contemporary themes from love and
peace to violence and war—often expressed in complex, even contradictory, and
yet compelling ways. “I think he is on a different level,” Eiber says.
At MAXXI, Gaetano Pesce: The Time of Diversity (June 26 to October 5) will rely
on an unusual exhibition design in which the works will be displayed on moveable
panels, allowing visitors to change the order, the point of view, and the organiza-
tion. Pesce describes it as being like a “mutant labyrinth” that is intended to ex-
press his notion that diversity is fundamental to life. One gallery will be given over
as “the ice room,” to be kept at a frigid temperature and featuring a video instal-
lation that will address such concepts as the difference between “official time”
(which is the division of the year into months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and is
what we live by, tracking them on our watches, cell phones, and clocks) and the
more metaphysical or existential notion that no two instances of time are ever, in
our lives, exactly alike.
The museum’s courtyard will feature an eight-meter (somewhat more than
twenty-six feet) version of Pesce’s famously anthropomorphic UP chair (based
on the female body) that will actually be a structure housing video installations
dealing with the global issues affecting women (the idea is for visitors to enter
into the “womb” of the chair, which was designed forty-five years ago). Pesce
conceived this as both a celebration of his most iconic design and as a caution-
ary message, which only underscores the depth and intricacy of his thinking.
fondazionemaxxi.it
—Beth Dunlop