NYC – How Should We Live? Propositions for the Modern Interior at MoMA

With How Should We Live? Propositions for the Modern Interior, on view from October 1, 2016, to April 23, 2017, the Museum of Modern Art examines a range of environments -domestic interiors, exhibition displays, and retail spaces – to explore the complex collaborative partnerships, materials, and processes that have shaped the modernist interior space, from the 1920s to the 1950s.

cover-image: Eileen Gray. Extendable Table from E-1027. c.1930. Cork, nickel-plated tubular steel, and painted wood, 28 3/4 × 46 1/2 × 24 3/4″ (73 × 118.1 × 62.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art New York. Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, Alice and Tom Tisch, Sid Bass, USM Foundation, and Committee of Architecture and Design Fund

Charlotte Perriand. Dormitory furnishings from the Maison du Brésil, Paris. 1959. Wood, tubular steel, plastic, formica, fabric, and aluminum, dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder.

Rather than concentrating on isolated masterworks, attention is given to the synthesis of design elements within each setting and the connection of external factors and attitudes—aesthetic, social, technological, and political—that these propositions express in material and spatial form.
Divided into three chronological groupings – the late 1920s to the early 1930s, the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, and the late 1940s into the 1950s – the exhibition brings together over 200 objects in total but highlights several large-scale interiors, including Grete Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen (1926–27), Reich and Mies’s Velvet and Silk Café (1927), Perriand and Le Corbusier’s kitchen from the Unité d’Habitation (1954) and study- bedroom from the Maison du Brésil (1959).

Herbert Matter. K(noll) Single Pedestal Furniture Designed By Eero Saarinen. c. 1957. Lithograph, 45 x 26″ (114.2 x 66 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the designer. © 2016 Alexander Matter.

Lilly Reich. Women’s Fashion Exhibition, Berlin, Germany. View of the Velvet and Silk Café. 1927. Gelatin silver print, 8 x 10″ (20.3 x 25.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mies van der Rohe Archive, gift of the architect.

Grete Lihotzky. Frankfurt Kitchen from the Ginnheim-Höhenblick Housing Estate, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 1926-1927. Various materials, 8’9″ x 12’10” x 6’10” (266.7 x 391.2 x 208.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Joan R. Brewster in memory of her Husband George W.W. Brewster, by exchange and the Architecture & Design Purchase Fund

How Should We Live? is organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, with Luke Baker, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA.

How Should We Live? Propositions for the Modern Interior
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
from October 1, 2016, to April 23, 2017
http://www.moma.org/
All images are courtesy of MoMA