In a soul feeding effort I spent Saturday with myself and my favorite DC Museums so you will all get to have a nice little overview of what is up and can be seen this week. In installements. Every day at 2 pm. Since I am organized like that.
First up:
Marcel Breuer @ National Building Museum
I have pimped the National Building Museum on here many times, and rightfully so. Architecture is, aside from being what I do for a living, everyone’s favorite cocktail party conversation topic and we should all consider ourselves blessed that the NBM is here.
They have some of the finest speakers in town (I’ve seen everyone from Rem Koolhaas to Peter Eisenman to David Rockwell to Daniel Liebeskind there), a kick ass family program and they let you picnic in the main hall, which, let me tell you, IS AWE INSPIRING.
Anyways, the just got their Marcel Breuer exhibit in (it opened this Saturday), courtesy of the Vitras Museum in Germany, and you need to go.
For the unititiated: Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) was one of the leading figures in twentieth-century design and architecture. His work spanned his studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany in the 1920s, to a number of innovative furniture designs in the 1930s (including the legendary, named after Kandinsky “Wassily” chair) and a whole series of wonderful architectural work in the US in the 40s and onwards (among other things he is the man responsible for the Whitney Museum in NY).
Now, what is so great about this show is that it pays equal attention to all the phases of Breuer’s work.
Architectural designs are meticulously reproduced in 1:50 pristine models (remember to pull out the plans from underneath-their simplicity of programming is really something to behold) and separated into easily digestible portions on: “space”, “volume”, “houses” making it a breeze to follow and enjoy.
Furniture work includes both some originally produced 1920s versions of “Wassily” as well as his work under Walter Gropius and for Thonet, and is, rather ingeniously, separated, not chronologically, but according to the innovative uses of material Breuer applied himself to :“aluminum”, “tubed steel”, “laminated wood” etc…
It is almost mesmerizing to see how well most of this furniture (which at this point is almost 90 years old) holds up: both design wise and production wise. If you ever needed proof that quality design endures time and trends-well, here you have it.
Go. and enjoy.
(added bonus: NBM’s museum shop is the best place in this city to buy gifts. Hands down)
for homework purposes read up here: http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/current/breuer/index.htm
My firm actually had a project in the latter. But its a travelling exhibit so its God knows where now.
Also on display right now: David Macaulay and The Symbol and The city. Both excellent.
November 5, 2007 at 4:01 pmRight on! I had a pretty good chance at getting one of the LeDroit Park homes by Sorg+A last year, but waited a bit too long and it slipped thru my fingers last year. Drat.
November 5, 2007 at 4:10 pmKudos to NBM. Great exhibit.
November 5, 2007 at 5:24 pmI’ll definitely second this exhibit. I’ve always been a fan of Breuer (so much so that I went to a university he designed) and he’s been getting a lot of play in shows around here lately. He figured prominently in the corcoran’s modernism exhibit earlier this year, and now he has one all to himself. Good stuff.
November 5, 2007 at 6:42 pmNBM is one of my faves. being a furniture design whore, i can’t wait to check out this exhibit. :)
November 6, 2007 at 10:33 am
I find myself going here at least once a month. I really need to go take a look at this one. Also, the history of DC always has something - I love Marion Barry and his crusade aginist the white mans freeway.
I can only wish that sometime they will revisit the following: http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/current/Rowhouse_Redux.html
November 5, 2007 at 3:58 pmand
http://www.nbm.org/Exhibits/current/Affordable_Housing.html