Design Milestones Celebrating 100 Years in 2017
1. With the addition of Studio Vollaerszwart’s adhesive sheets, city hall in the Hague is dressing up in honor of Piet Mondrian as part of “Mondrian to Dutch Design: 100 Years of De Stijl in 2017.” The exhibition takes place throughout the Netherlands, yearlong.
2. “Irving Penn: Centennial” opens at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 24, two months in advance of the photographer’s actual birthday. More than 200 images from his 70-year career will include the dye-transfer print Mouth (For L’Oréal).
3. Among I.M. Pei’s countless accomplishments are the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, the glass pyramid outside the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and, come April 26, living for a century.
4. In honor of the centenary of Finland’s independence, the Design Museum, Helsinki, has launched “Utopia Now–The Story of Finnish Design.” Pieces such as Rita Taskinen’s Kiss, a 1982 chair, are on view through 2020.
5. London’s Royal Academy of Arts looks back to the start of the Bolshevik era with “Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932.” On view through April 17, the exhibition includes some surprising examples. Kazimir Malevich, best known for cerebral white-on-white compositions, is represented by the oil on canvas Peasants.
6. Born in 1917, he went on to design a famously red typewriter, furniture, stores, and showrooms and to co-found the Memphis Group. Amid these myriad accomplishments, “Ettore Sottsass: The Glass,” opening at Venice’s Stanze del Vetro museum April 10, zooms in on his work in that particular material, such as the Clesitera vase from 1986. See more photos from the exhibition here.
