Design and Its Publics: Curators, Critics and Historians

The Design Institute (College of Design) and the Department of Art History (College of Liberal Arts) joined forces for the first time to present Design and Its Publics: Curators, Critics, and Historians, an international conference on the state of contemporary architecture and design discourse, held on Friday and Saturday, April 27-28, 2007 at the Mayo Memorial Auditorium on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank Minneapolis campus.

In two days of conversation, our distinguished speakers offered reciprocal reflections on architecture and design criticism and curatorial practice, contrasting the perspectives from North America and Europe.

Report:

Papers presented on the first day of Design and Its Publics set Minneapolis’ new cultural building in an international context, and in historical perspective, with comparisons to the Grand Projects in Paris under President Mitterrand (Jean Louis Cohen); a survey of the previous generations of “Important Architecture” for cultural buildings in Minneapolis (Suzanne Stephens); analysis of the city’s two native genres of architectural monument, the Grain Elevator and the Shopping Mall (Maarten Delbeke); the need for everyday architecture, not just cultural monuments, to strengthen the fabric of urban life (Margaret Crawford), and the curious nature of twins, both human and urban (Olivier Touraine). Broadcaster Frances Anderton eloquently refuted the widespread notion that architecture cannot be adequately represented on the radio. Using audio clips from interviews on DnA (her KCRW-Los Angeles radio show), she convincingly demonstrated that, when deprived of images, qualities come to the fore that tend to get suppressed when buildings and environments are treated as a primarily visual experience.

On the second day, the conference shifted gears to address a different context: the museum world, and the challenges and responsibilities of curating architecture and design in major U.S. and European museums. Speakers addressed diverse agenda and modes of exhibition display at the Museum of Modern Art (Barry Bergdoll); new definitions of architectural context (Henry Urbach); the range of audiences that curators take into consideration when planning exhibitions (Brooke Hodge); the increasing museum real estate devoted to these subjects and their corresponding cultural significance (Joe Rosa); and MoMAs recent design exhibitions as an index of current societal concerns for example about safety and security (Paola Antonelli). The second day closed with a reflective paper by Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic on the meaning of designed objects in our lives today. (Zoe Ryan was, unfortunately, unable to attend, but we plan to include her paper in a DAIP publication.)

Each day concluded with a Question and Answer period moderated by co-organizers Steven Ostrow, Chair of the Department of Art History, and Janet Abrams, Director of the Design Institute. Questions from the floor were a significant component of the lively dialogue on both days, and the audience included many VIPs from the Twin Cities design community, as well as numerous visitors from around the U.S. and Canada.

The conference was the subject of an editorial on Thursday May 3, 2007, in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and of reports in the Arts section of that newspaper. It was preceded on Thursday April 6 by a specially arranged speakers’ guided tour of Minneapolis’s new Downtown Public Library, Walker Art Center, Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Christ Church Lutheran, by Eliel and Eero Saarinen.

List of Speakers

(L to R) S. Stephens, M. Delbeke, O. Touraine, O. Bouman, F. Anderton, M. Crawford and Thomas Fisher

(L) Herman Milligan, Vice President, Wells Fargo Bank and Chase Rynd, Executive Director, National Building Museum

Paola Antonelli

O. Touraine (hidden), O. Bouman and F. Anderton

(L to R) P. Antonelli, H. Urbach, B. Bergdoll, Janet Abrams, J. Rosa, B. Hodge and D. Sudjic

Steven Ostrow, Department Head, Art History

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