Polaroid Sunglasses. c. 1946. Plastic, l. 6 1/8″ (15.6 cm). Manufactured by American Optical Corp., Southbridge, MA. Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.
A favorite childhood pastime of mine was digging for buried artifacts of the Leni Lenape in my backyard. Another was making maps of the neighborhood. Neither pursuit was entirely productive in any real sense
Jason Crum. Project for a Painted Wall, New York City, New York. Perspective. 1969. Gouache on photograph. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase, 1969
In The Realm of Ideas Frank Lloyd Wright called architecture “the truest record of Life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.”
Gerrit Rietveld. “Beugel” Child’s Chair. c.1928. Manufacturer: Metz & Co. Gift of Jo Carole Lauder
Market Buzz: Digesting Euro Turmoil……….Monsters laughed during gang rape……….Regime bulldozers pave space for Euro vision……….I feel everything will be okay……….EU to cash in on Libya………..Somali radio reporter murdered………..Dancers urge action on anorexia………..
Lester Beall. Rural Electrification Administration. 1937. Lithograph, 40 x 30″ (101.6 x 76.2 cm). Gift of the designer
I won’t be naming any names, but recently someone admitted to me that they just don’t “get” posters. I don’t get what’s not to get.
Ralph Borland. Suited for Subversion. 2002. Nylon-reinforced PVC, padding, speaker, and pulse reader. Fund for the Twenty-First Century. Photos by Ralph Borland and Pieter Hugo
I’m a big fan of words; letters and the written word to be a little more precise. And not just the sound and meaning, but actual words—their physicality, their shape and form, and how they look. I have a nephew who was crazy for the letter “u”; specifically the lower case “u,” with serifs.
Hobie Alter. Expert Model Hobie Surfboard, view of deck. 1958
In its August 1997 issue, Longboarder magazine ran a story on MoMA’s Hobie surfboard with the tag line “MoMA’s Got a Woody: Yes, But is it Art?” Fun hook, but perhaps the wrong question. The better question might be, why a surfboard? or better still, why this surfboard?
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.
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.
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