(I fully expect Thomas Chatterton Williams to take up Johnson's defense
against "cancel culture".)
Artists Ask MoMA to Remove Philip Johnson’s Name, Citing Racist Views
A group of more than 30 artists and academics have signed a letter
asking institutions like the Museum of Modern Art to excise the
influential architect’s name from their spaces.
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Credit...Jane Beiles for The New York Times
Sarah Bahr <https://www.nytimes.com/by/sarah-bahr>
BySarah Bahr <https://www.nytimes.com/by/sarah-bahr>
* NYT, Dec. 3, 2020
Philip Johnson was one of the most influential architects of the past
century, chameleonic in each of his roles as a New York power broker,
art collector and creator of his “Glass House
<https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/arts/design/06glas.html>,” a
celebrated landmark of modernist design in Connecticut.
He also championed racist and white supremacist viewpoints in his
younger years. Johnson’s Nazi sympathies, for example, have been well
documented, and he spent the years after World War II trying to distance
himself from them.
Now a group of more than 30 prominent artists, architects and academics
are casting a light on the more unsavory part of Johnson’s legacy,
demandingin a letter published online on Nov. 27
<https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQBZHBg20UdYfLz69NOPqPzrkz1LY97Pcgl1Pc05tBt-rYWWP6QQMqO2-yf8KGVIY1CgNQUQYlNbO88/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.gadb784fa4b_0_6>that
institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Harvard Graduate
School of Design remove the name of the architect, whodied in 2005
<https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/world/americas/obituary-philip-johnson-98-a-monumental-force-on-us.html>,
from their spaces.
“There is a role for Johnson’s architectural work in archives and
historic preservation,” the Johnson Study Group, a largely anonymous
group of designers and architects, wrote in the letter. “However, naming
titles and spaces inevitably suggests that the honoree is a model for
curators, administrators, students and others who participate in these
institutions.”
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The letter was signed by the contemporary artist Xaviera Simmons; the
landscape architect and MacArthur fellow Kate Orff; and V. Mitch McEwen,
an assistant professor of architecture at Princeton University, who is
among eight of the 10 architects in an upcoming exhibition at MoMA —
“Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America
<https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5219>” — that is slated to
open Feb. 20.
It cites Johnson’s “widely documented” advocacy for white supremacist
views, his attempt to found a fascist party in Louisiana, and failure to
include work by a single Black artist or designer in MoMA’s collection
during his tenure there. (He served in various roles over six decades.)
The letter called on any institutions using his name to remove it.
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“He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of
racism in the field of architecture,” the letter said, “a legacy that
continues to do harm today.”
Johnson’s name has been on one of the exhibition galleries at the Museum
of Modern Art, where he served as its first head of architecture and
design, since 1984. His name is also included in the title of the
museum’s chief curator of architecture and design.
Johnson created buildings that are widely considered architectural
masterpieces of the 20th century, among them the MoMA sculpture garden
and the pavilion that houses pre-Columbian art at the Dumbarton Oaks
estate in Washington. The New York Times critic Paul Goldberger praised
him as American architecture’s “godfather, gadfly, scholar, patron,
critic, curator, and cheerleader”in his obituary
<https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/world/americas/obituary-philip-johnson-98-a-monumental-force-on-us.html>.
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But in his younger years, heopenly admired
<https://www.newyorker.com/culture/dept-of-design/philip-johnson-the-man-who-made-architecture-amoral>Hitler’s
manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” attended Nazi rallies in Germany andwas
investigated by the F.B.I.
<https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/one-of-americas-most-famous-architects-was-a-nazi-propa-1566021324>for
his connections to the Nazi party. He rejected Nazism after the end of
World War II.
Representatives from MoMA and Harvard did not immediately respond to
requests for comment on Thursday. But in an email on Friday, a MoMA
spokeswoman said, “The museum is taking this issue very seriously and is
extensively researching all available information.”
Ms. Orff, the landscape architect and MacArthur fellow, said in an email
on Thursday that removing Johnson’s name from the gallery and the
curator position would represent a significant step in dismantling
racism in design culture.
“Landscape architecture is catching up in its assessment of its own
legacy,” Ms. Orff said. “To move forward with a more imaginative, just,
and equitable culture in the design fields, we have to reckon with past
figures who set the ground rules.”
Sarah Bahr is a reporter on the Culture desk and a member of the
2020-2021 New York Times fellowship class.@smbahr14
<https://twitter.com/smbahr14>
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