ABSTRACT

In the architecture exhibitions of the 1950s, the display of full-scale photographs and real construction elements became an effective strategy to popularize modern architecture, and nowhere more so than at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York. Replacing representational models, curators staged aesthetic experiences that approximated the reality of buildings – a strategy that had proven to be a highly effective in promoting modern architecture to general audiences, who were particularly receptive to this type of display. Through these clever exhibitions, MoMA sought to direct the development of American architecture and when seen from a historical perspective, simultaneously developed the parameters for an aesthetics of experience that would influence not only the design of exhibitions over the next decades but also the production of architecture per se. MoMA’s exhibition approach prefigured many of the paradigmatic shifts in architectural design that privilege experience and have been identified in key examples of contemporary museum architecture.