Business
& Labor
Bergdoll Offers Glimpse of Upcoming MoMA Tenure
(archrecord.construction.com - 07/31/2006)
By Fred
A. Bernstein
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| © Eileen Barroso,
courtesy of Columbia University |
In June the Museum of Modern Art announced
that Barry Bergdoll will succeed Terence Riley as Philip Johnson
Chief Curator of Architecture and Design. Bergdoll, who is
currently the chair of the art history department at Columbia
University, says he is taking the job at time when architecture
exhibitions are in vogue. Not long ago, mounting an architecture
show “was a way for a museum to empty out its galleries,”
he says. “Now it seems to be a way to fill them.”
The problem for Bergdoll is that other
New York museums seem far ahead of MoMA in exploiting the
public’s infatuation with architecture. The Guggenheim
(where the current Zaha Hadid exhibition runs through October
25) is planning shows on Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen,
and Le Corbusier in conjunction with the 50th anniversary
of its Wright building, while the Whitney Museum has a Buckminster
Fuller retrospective in the works. And the Metropolitan Museum
of Art has scheduled a show on the architecture of Frank Stella.
Meanwhile, MoMA, which Riley left in April, has only one show
in the pipeline: a survey of the relationship between art
and science curated by Paola Antonelli and tentatively set
for 2008.
Bergdoll won’t move to MoMA full-time
until January 1, and he will continue teaching at Columbia.
But he says he plans to spend the fall “in overdrive,”
developing programs for the museum.
The historian’s academic interests
include not only 20th-century stars like Marcel Breuer, but
Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leon Vaudoyer. Bergdoll says he
has no plans to presents shows on the pre-modernists.
His main focus will be the 20th century—and
the 21st. In addition to what he calls “monographic shows,”
he expects to mount shows on “process,” including,
most likely, digital fabrication, which he says is changing
the “command structure” by allowing architects to
assume responsibility for making the things they design. He
says his interest in the topic was piqued when, at Columbia,
he worked with Marble Fairbanks Architects on a slide library
made from digitally produced components.
While developing ideas for exhibitions,
Bergdoll is also looking to fill two curatorial positions
that were left open as Riley's tenure was ending. “If
you print that, I'll be inundated with CVs," Bergdoll
jokes, adding: "One of the most exciting parts of this
is that it’s not just about taking over the helm; it’s
about putting together a team. There’s a lot of building
to do.”
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