Architecture in the Museum: The Art of Advocacy
Barry Bergdoll – Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University & The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Department of Architecture (today of Architecture and Design) at the Museum of Modern Art is the oldest continuing art museum department committed to the complex tasks of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting architecture. Its history is one of making and breaking canons and reputations to be sure, but it has also in its DNA since the 1930s a vision of a proactive prodding of architecture to new challenges and new possibilities.
Professor Bergdoll will reflect on the history, showing the key role MoMA played in housing reform, new approaches to community planning, and to raising awareness of the faults of large scale urban renewal as well as the urgencies of architectural preservation over the decade.
Professor Bergdoll will discuss the recent series of laboratory/workshop exhibitions addressing climate change and sea level rise, urban sprawl and housing, and — forthcoming — the consequences of large scale income disparity in rapidly expanding cities.
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