Architectural exhibitions aimed at a general audience have always been notoriously difficult to pull off successfully. Small-scale representations—such as photographs, physical models, intricate drawings, and, increasingly, dynamic video animations—can only ever approximate the raw, immersive experience of a full-size, completed work. Much like traditional art objects, these representations must instantly captivate the casual museum visitor while simultaneously acknowledging the thicket of real-world constraints, including programmatic requirements, complex sites, and tight budgets, that ultimately shape architectural form.
When the projects on display possess an explicit socially or environmentally conscious dimension, the curatorial challenge becomes even tougher. Such displays often lack the immediate "wow factor"—the sheer visual panache of extravagantly innovative or formally elegant architectural masterworks that make museum visitors stop dead in their tracks. Furthermore, a persistent danger lurks: that providing the extensive background information and contextual data necessary to truly appreciate the projects will inadvertently transform the exhibition space into a heavy, static walk-in book.
Undaunted by these systemic hurdles, two of New York’s leading art and design institutions—the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum—have enthusiastically embraced this demanding genre of exhibition over the past few years. Both prominent museums have boldly organized ambitious design shows that directly confront pressing issues of problematic living conditions, climate vulnerability, and socio-economic disparity around the globe.
The Evolution of Socially Responsible Design at Cooper-Hewitt
When the Cooper-Hewitt mounted Design for the Other 90% at its palatial historic quarters on upper Fifth Avenue back in 2007, the exhibition generated a tremendous amount of media attention and drew an impressive audience of 100,000 visitors. Building on that momentum, the museum designated Cynthia Smith, the industrial designer and public service veteran who had organized that foundational show, as its inaugural Curator of Socially Responsible Design in 2009.
Smith followed up with a highly anticipated sequel, Design with the Other 90%: CITIES, which opened for a successful three-month run in October 2011 at the United Nations headquarters while the Cooper-Hewitt’s permanent building underwent extensive expansion. The exhibition prominently displayed 65 innovative projects hailing from 25 different countries, concentrating heavily on impoverished slums and informal settlements across the Global South. The venue shift proved remarkably effective, drawing 150,000 visitors, including a substantial number of international UN diplomats and staff members.
"The United Nations was a great location," Smith reflected on the unique collaborative run.
MoMA’s Deepening Commitment to Socially Minded Curation
Meanwhile, MoMA’s exhibitions in this vital arena have proven to be even more exceptionally popular with the general public. Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront, an exhibition devoted entirely to imaginative architectural solutions addressing rising sea levels caused by global warming, reached a staggering high of 881,520 visitors over its six-and-a-half-month duration in 2010. Shortly after, Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, which closely examined innovative design created specifically for underserved communities across five continents, opened in October 2010 and drew 311,188 visitors during its standard three-month stay.
MoMA further cemented this socially conscious identity under the leadership of Barry Bergdoll, who has served as the museum’s chief curator of architecture and design since 2006. Bergdoll, who also maintains a dual career as a professor of architectural history at Columbia University, might initially seem like an unlikely candidate to steer MoMA away from the blockbuster monographic exhibitions celebrating iconic figures like Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe—monographs with which the museum became historically identified.
Yet, Bergdoll is quick to point out deep historical precedents, noting that MoMA’s very first architecture exhibition, the legendary Modern Architecture: International Exhibition of 1932, actually featured a significant social housing component. Over the decades that followed, similar socially minded subjects appeared sporadically within the institution’s galleries, though the frequency of these civic-minded shows has clearly stepped up in recent years.
As Joseph Rosa, the director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, observes of the broader cultural shift: "The museum today is becoming more of an incubator of ideas, with people thinking about socially minded critiques of culture."
For his part, Bergdoll explains that he is actively trying to pose critical questions that are rarely addressed in normal, commercially driven architectural commissions. "But the shows do involve architects whose work is already of interest, so we are continuing the traditional role of MoMA in culling the finest talent," he notes.
Commissioning Speculative Solutions for American Housing
Like the earlier Rising Currents presentation, MoMA’s Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream exhibition placed the museum in an active, interventionist role by directly commissioning speculative solutions developed through an intensive collaborative workshop process. Bergdoll organized the expansive project alongside Reinhold Martin, Director of Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
Together, the curators isolated five distinct geographical areas across the United States—ranging from Florida to California—where the devastating banking mortgage crisis of 2007 and 2008 left a trail of stalled construction projects and expansive swaths of publicly held land now sitting vacant and available for redevelopment. For each of the five targeted sites, identified strictly on the basis of rigorous Buell Center research, Bergdoll and Martin assigned a multidisciplinary team led by forward-thinking architects and rounded out by elite experts in finance, housing, urban planning, and infrastructure.
Each collaborative team created radical proposals designed to provoke entirely new ways of thinking about American housing and dense community living. Through this exercise, Bergdoll aims to actively engage the general public in understanding "how architects think."
Among the selected Foreclosed teams—which include prominent firms such as Studio Gang, MOS, WORKac, and Visible Weather—Zago Architecture took on the challenge of redesigning a failed suburban subdivision pocked with unbuilt, weed-choked lots in an unincorporated section of Rialto, California, located just east of Los Angeles. Principal Andrew Zago’s quixotic and visually colorful scheme presents an array of alternative housing typologies, including duplexes and innovative row houses, skillfully rearranged to completely avoid the deadly monotony and spatial inefficiency of the traditional subdivision house, yard, and driveway model.
Tackling the Nonvisual Realities of Exhibition Design
As is typical in exhibitions heavily centered on social and systemic issues, Foreclosed includes a substantial amount of nonvisual material that resists easy aestheticization. In one gallery, the space is devoted entirely to presenting the complex economic and demographic data underpinning the exhibition’s overarching program.
Granger Moorhead, the designer responsible for executing the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition at the United Nations, tackled the perennial museum problem of grainy historical photographs and variously fabricated architectural models by boldly abandoning any notion of a slick, museum-quality aesthetic.
"We tried to present the content in an informal, collaged way," Moorhead explained regarding the intentional shift in tone and presentation.
With such thorny matters to consider regarding presentation, physical constraints, and public engagement, cultural institutions must wisely seek a balance of subjects in their long-term programming. Looking toward the near future, the Cooper-Hewitt is preparing to devote an upcoming exhibition to the nuances of graphic design, while MoMA has plans for two major architecture shows on the horizon—one focusing on proto-Modernist master Henri Labrouste, and the other marking the museum’s very first retrospective dedicated to the works of Le Corbusier.
