MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House
Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design
This exhibition is the first to focus on the formidable range of architectural historian Esther McCoy's practice, and affirm her unassailable role as a key figure in American modernism. To research the exhibition, the co-curators - writer Susan Morgan and MAK Center director Kimberli Meyer - have worked closely with local archives and the Esther McCoy papers, an invaluable primary source comprised of thousands of documents and photographs which are housed at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art. Through photographs, drawings, texts, videos, and audio interviews, Sympathetic Seeing will highlight the extraordinary range and importance of McCoy's work. The exhibition covers McCoy's activist journalism focusing on fair labor practices and Los Angeles slum clearances in the 1930s; her work with R.M. Schindler first as a draftsperson and later a critic and historian of his work; the Arts & Architecture magazine years and the rise of innovative domestic architecture; her campaign to save Irving Gill's 1916 Dodge House; and her always incisive stories that deliver an irresistibly compelling, first-hand view of American modernism.
West Hollywood, CA 90069