Visit: Making Music Modern

Jan Lenica. "Wozzeck," 1964. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art.

The Museum of Modern Art periodically refreshes its permanent collection design galleries. For the past year, the theme was “Designing Modern Women,” in two phases. I wrote about my disquiet with the expanded definition of “women’s work” in the first of those two installations here. On November 15, the museum opened a brand-new installation, Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye that I can recommend without reservation. I’ve written before about my love of themed collection shows: big museums have so many things that never see the light of a gallery, and I’m always excited to see juxtapositions of big names and never-heard-of-hims or -hers, as well as the layering of different media themes can bring. Music, as it happens, is a particularly rich and broad theme.

We have architecture, in the form of a fabulous sketch by German Expressionist architect Hans Poelzig (usually resigned to the quirky margins), an incredible model of the Sydney Opera House that shows where the roof shapes came from (curator Juliet Kinchin said she thought it had never before been exhibited), and a recent model of Snohetta’s Oslo Opera House.

We have posters galore, from Loie Fuller to the Beatles, psychedelia to Paula Scher. I loved the three huge classical music posters from the 1980s, by Croatian designer Boris Bucan, that meet you at the top of the escalator.

Radios, phonographs, speakers and iPods, including Dieter Rams and Hans Gugelot’s “Snow White’s Coffin” SK4/10 for Braun. It’s a lot of things, people, and sounds you wouldn’t usually put together, demonstrating the strengths of MoMA’s collection and also making connections between the past and the present day. Try to go during one of the lunchtime performances of the instruments of the past, and don’t miss the subtle transparent speakers overhead.