Making
Music Modern: Design for Eye and Ear
at The
Museum of Modern Art
Nov 15,
2014 - Jan 17, 2016
Music and
design—art forms that share aesthetics of rhythm, tonality, harmony,
interaction, and improvisation—have long had a close affinity, perhaps never
more so than during the 20th century. Radical design and technological
innovations, from the LP to the iPod and from the transistor radio to the
Stratocaster, have profoundly altered our sense of how music can be performed,
heard, distributed, and visualized. Avant-garde designers—among them Charles
Rennie Mackintosh, Lilly Reich, Saul Bass, Jørn Utzon, and Daniel
Libeskind—have pushed the boundaries of their design work in tandem with the
music of their time. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, Making Music
Modern gathers designs for auditoriums, instruments, and equipment for
listening to music, along with posters, record sleeves, sheet music, and
animation. The exhibition examines alternative music cultures of the early 20th
century, the rise of radio during the interwar period, how design shaped the
“cool” aesthetic of midcentury jazz and hi-fidelity culture, and its role in
countercultural music scenes from pop to punk, and later 20th-century design
explorations at the intersection of art, technology, and perception.
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