Architectural Misogyny: A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture in Southern California at MOCA
Advertised as 'one of the most important architectural exhibit among the many curated under the Pacific Standard Time umbrella,' A New Sculpturalism is fraught with scandals. I have to admit: I haven't been and I don't intend to go.
The backstory goes like this. The original curator of A New Sculturalism exhibit, Christopher Mount was fired because architectural superstar Frank Gehry disagreed with him, an act which threatened the whole existence of the show. However, upon Gehry's recommendation, Mount was replaced by Thom Mayne who took over the curation and the exhibit design. When the exhibit finally opened with two-month delay it featured a new exhibit design by Thom Mayne's Morphosis. The exhibit highlights physical models of 30 well-promoted Los Angeles practices, with a ribbon weaving over the models. Videos featuring Interviews with architects are projected onto the ribbon.
The show, much like anything happening at MOCA in the last few years, is not even worth criticizing. A month after A New Sculpturalism opened, MOCA's controversial director Jeffrey Deitch resigned to a great joy of Los Angeles art community.
However, the serendipitous consequence of this messy process and Mayne's ribbon is more revealing of the internal problems in Los Angeles architectural practices than of MOCA's political operation. The ribbon closely resembles the ribbon used in the quintessential exhibits called Non-Standard Architecture held at Pompidou a decade ago. The ribbon at Pompidou was used to a great aim, it's linear nature and implied movement showed historical development of computational design to situate the contemporary practices and educate the audience. Instead of history, Mayne's ribbon projects interviews with architects onto the ribbon. But the continuous movement of the ribbon, and body's tendency to move along the ribbon rather than listen to the interviews, unveils an interesting reality about Los Angeles architecture. Most of those interviewed are white males.
For a city that lives in diversity, it is surprising to see so many white male architects promoted in this exhibit that claims to span the contemporary architecture of Southern California. As verbalized recently by Zaha Hadid in an interview and evident in the resistance to acknowledge Denise Scott-Brown as an equal Pricker Prize winner, the reality of architectural profession is that architecture is unfortunately still dominated by males. MOCA's exhibit has shown only that the contemporary architecture in Los Angeles is not that contemporary.
Advertised as 'one of the most important architectural exhibit among the many curated under the Pacific Standard Time umbrella,' A New Sculpturalism is fraught with scandals. I have to admit: I haven't been and I don't intend to go.
The backstory goes like this. The original curator of A New Sculturalism exhibit, Christopher Mount was fired because architectural superstar Frank Gehry disagreed with him, an act which threatened the whole existence of the show. However, upon Gehry's recommendation, Mount was replaced by Thom Mayne who took over the curation and the exhibit design. When the exhibit finally opened with two-month delay it featured a new exhibit design by Thom Mayne's Morphosis. The exhibit highlights physical models of 30 well-promoted Los Angeles practices, with a ribbon weaving over the models. Videos featuring Interviews with architects are projected onto the ribbon.
The show, much like anything happening at MOCA in the last few years, is not even worth criticizing. A month after A New Sculpturalism opened, MOCA's controversial director Jeffrey Deitch resigned to a great joy of Los Angeles art community.
However, the serendipitous consequence of this messy process and Mayne's ribbon is more revealing of the internal problems in Los Angeles architectural practices than of MOCA's political operation. The ribbon closely resembles the ribbon used in the quintessential exhibits called Non-Standard Architecture held at Pompidou a decade ago. The ribbon at Pompidou was used to a great aim, it's linear nature and implied movement showed historical development of computational design to situate the contemporary practices and educate the audience. Instead of history, Mayne's ribbon projects interviews with architects onto the ribbon. But the continuous movement of the ribbon, and body's tendency to move along the ribbon rather than listen to the interviews, unveils an interesting reality about Los Angeles architecture. Most of those interviewed are white males.
For a city that lives in diversity, it is surprising to see so many white male architects promoted in this exhibit that claims to span the contemporary architecture of Southern California. As verbalized recently by Zaha Hadid in an interview and evident in the resistance to acknowledge Denise Scott-Brown as an equal Pricker Prize winner, the reality of architectural profession is that architecture is unfortunately still dominated by males. MOCA's exhibit has shown only that the contemporary architecture in Los Angeles is not that contemporary.
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