Design Milestones Celebrating 75-90 Years in 2017
1. A photograph of Montreal’s Segal Centre for Performing Arts, formerly the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, is on view through June 4 at the nearby Canadian Centre for Architecture in “Phyllis Lambert: 75 Years at Work,” who designed the center in 1967 and is also celebrating her 90th birthday.
2. It’s fitting that the architecture and design department of New York’s Museum of Modern Art shares our birthday, the first of its kind when it launched in 1932 with an exhibition featuring a model of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy.
3. It was 80 years ago when Cristóbal Balenciaga left Spain due to the Spanish Civil War to open his Paris couture house, which London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is acknowledging on May 27 with “Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion,” where a 1950 photograph shows Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn (wife of Irving) wearing one of his coat designs.
4. Since 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has shaped the contemporary art landscape, and the New York museum commemorates that through September 6 in “Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim,” which includes a late 1930’s photograph of Solomon and Irene Guggenheim’s Plaza Hotel suite adorned with Vasily Kandinsky’s Composition 8. Watch our video about the exhibition here.
5. As its country turns 150, Air Canada hits 80, marking the occasion with a rebranding that encompasses a new black-and-red livery design by Winkreative CEO and Canadian Tyler Brûlé.
6. Here’s a clue: three-quarters of a century, which is the age of the New York Times crossword puzzle, initially created to offer readers a distraction during the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.