John McAndrew's Modernist Vision: From the Vassar College Art Library to the Museum of Modern Art in New York

摘要

The two books reviewed here, by Mardges Bacon and Thomas S. Hines, use the methods of biography to offer new insights into the Museum of Modern Art's engagement with architecture from its founding years until the mid-1980s. During that period, the exhibitions sponsored by MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design (A&D) garnered significant attention from the popular and trade presses, and the institution took seriously its self-appointed role as arbiter of the modernist canon. In the realm of architecture and design, the figure of Philip Johnson loomed large, but these books usefully refocus attention on the creative and administrative skills (or lack thereof) of two other men who made MoMA's history as vital and dynamic as it was: John McAndrew, curator of A&D from 1937 to 1941, and Arthur Drexler, who served first as curator of architecture (1951-56) and then as director of the Department of Architecture and Design (1956-86).