A “work in progress” sign should hang on “Digital Matter,” a kinetic installation humming away in the glass-walled lobby of the High Museum of Art’s Anne Cox Chambers Wing.
Dutch designer Joris Laarman’s ultra orange robotic piece, busily constructing a rococo side table out of thousands of tiny building blocks, is the first work that visitors will see in the “Modern by Design” exhibit opening today. It’s an eye-catcher in a three-story building stuffed with them — nearly eight decades of design highlights drawn from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the High.
When the High announced plans for “Modern by Design” last year as part of its ongoing collaboration with MoMA, the exhibit sounded like a significant homage to the New York institution’s groundbreaking role in collecting and exhibiting design pieces, with a secondary show drawn from the Atlanta museum’s own growing collection.
But Laarman’s experimental work, reflecting the designer’s interest in merging art with science and industry, signals that the High exhibit is no mere sidelight. While the second-floor MoMA exhibit captures three key moments in that august institution’s history documenting design, the High presentations on the plaza and skyway levels energetically address design in the present tense with suggestions of where it may be heading in the future.
“I think this exhibition is a great announcement of the High’s commitment and its role as a player in collecting design,” said Sarah Schleuning, who became the museum’s curator of decorative arts and design last month.
Schleuning, who came from Wolfsonian Museum at Miami’s Florida International University, replaced Ronald T. Labaco. His mission since his 2007 arrival had been to bring the High’s decorative collection, a longtime museum strength but dominated by traditional pieces, into the 21st century.
The High’s 23 recently acquired works by 11 mainly international artists on view starting today suggest that the curator, now at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, was as busy as the always-in-motion, table-making robot in the lobby (Laarman has named her “Abby”).
Pieces displayed on the brightly lit skyway level that command attention include Italian designer Ettore Sottsass’ “Superbox” wardrobe of wood and plastic laminate; French artist Patrick Jouin’s” One Shot” folding nylon stool, which can be opened or collapsed using gravity alone (there’s no axle, screw or hinge); and “Cabbage Chairs,” the creation of the Japanese design collective Nendo from unwoven fabric that was a byproduct from pleat-making for clothes.
As it did with Laarman’s and Abby, the High commissioned Nendo to create “Visible Structures,” an installation of 12 stools, chairs and tables made of form core or cardboard and reinforced with an industrial-strength graphite tape.
“The primitive design of the chair responds gently to fabrication and distribution costs and environmental concerns, the kinds of issues that face our 21st-century selves,” the Tokyo-based collective explained in a statement.
While such work steers forward, the MoMA holdings one floor down hardly seem mired in the past, even though they revisit milestone New York exhibits from 1934 (“Machine Art,” curated by famed architect Philip Johnson), 1950-55 (the “Good Design” series of shows) and 1972 (“Italy: The New Domestic Landscape”).
Many of the clocks, lamps and chairs from the latter two mini-exhibits, for instance, will feel familiar — either in the form of inspiration, reproduction or brazen knockoffs — to anyone who’s shopped recently at Target, Ikea, Design Within Reach or West Elm.
And many of Johnson’s choices of “Machine Art” objects — a giant railroad car spring, a steel cross-cut saw blade, a circle of self-aligning ball bearings — appear up-to-the-minute modern more than three-quarters of a century later. Certainly, Marcel Breuer’s chrome-plated tubular steel and canvas club chair from the late 1920s has never been anything other than stylish.
“There’s a lineage and a kind of trajectory,” curator Schleuning said of the MoMA and High pieces representing different eras. “In some cases it’s an evolution and in some cases it’s a complete revolution — a push against what came before and a trying of new ideas.”
The High’s decorative arts and design collection exceeds 2,250 works, and Schleuning is excited about the opportunities to keep building.
“Two thousand-plus is not too many objects,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Going forward, I would like to look at collecting things both contemporary and historic that draw connections between where we’re moving and the past.”
“Eventually what is contemporary will become historic,” Schleuning added. “We’re not collecting for our lifetime. We’re collecting for a bigger time frame, so eventually it has to be cohesive anyway.”
Exhibit preview
“Modern by Design”
Through Aug. 14. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; until 8 p.m. Thursdays; noon- 5 p.m. Sundays. $18; $15, students and seniors; $11, ages 6-17; free, children 5 and younger and members. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4444, www.high.org.
About the Author
