Forty writes that “Transparency” is a wholly modernist term, unknown in architecture

before the twentieth century.’1 Modernist architecture is often associated with a quest

for visual transparency, which it associates with social transparency. The visually

transparent modernist façade implies that the workings within are equally transparent

and accessible. As Dan Graham recognizes, the transparency of modernist buildings

is deceptive. In Rock My Religion, next to a photograph of Mies van der Rohe’s 1958

Seagram building, New York, he writes:

Storefront for Art and Architecture is a New York gallery primarily noted for architec-

tural exhibitions. It occupies a long thin triangular room on the ground floor of a

corner building in Manhattan. One principal wall is internal; the other is external,

facing onto Kenmare Street. In 1993 Storefront commissioned the architect Steven

Holl and the artist Vito Acconci to collaborate on the design of a new external wall.