July 31, 2006

© Eileen Barroso, courtesy of Columbia University

In June the Museum of Modern Art announced that Barry Bergdoll will succeed Terence Riley as Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design. Bergdoll, who is currently the chair of the art history department at Columbia University, says he is taking the job at time when architecture exhibitions are in vogue. Not long ago, mounting an architecture show “was a way for a museum to empty out its galleries,” he says. “Now it seems to be a way to fill them.”

The problem for Bergdoll is that other New York museums seem far ahead of MoMA in exploiting the public’s infatuation with architecture. The Guggenheim (where the current Zaha Hadid exhibition runs through October 25) is planning shows on Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, and Le Corbusier in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of its Wright building, while the Whitney Museum has a Buckminster Fuller retrospective in the works. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art has scheduled a show on the architecture of Frank Stella. Meanwhile, MoMA, which Riley left in April, has only one show in the pipeline: a survey of the relationship between art and science curated by Paola Antonelli and tentatively set for 2008.

Bergdoll won’t move to MoMA full-time until January 1, and he will continue teaching at Columbia. But he says he plans to spend the fall “in overdrive,” developing programs for the museum.

The historian’s academic interests include not only 20th-century stars like Marcel Breuer, but Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leon Vaudoyer. Bergdoll says he has no plans to presents shows on the pre-modernists.

His main focus will be the 20th century—and the 21st. In addition to what he calls “monographic shows,” he expects to mount shows on “process,” including, most likely, digital fabrication, which he says is changing the “command structure” by allowing architects to assume responsibility for making the things they design. He says his interest in the topic was piqued when, at Columbia, he worked with Marble Fairbanks Architects on a slide library made from digitally produced components.

While developing ideas for exhibitions, Bergdoll is also looking to fill two curatorial positions that were left open as Riley's tenure was ending. “If you print that, I'll be inundated with CVs," Bergdoll jokes, adding: "One of the most exciting parts of this is that it’s not just about taking over the helm; it’s about putting together a team. There’s a lot of building to do.” 

Fred A. Bernstein

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