Museum Exhibitions as Mass Media spreading Architectural Ideas from Europe to USA in 20th Century

Abstract

The present paper is aimed to illustrate the role played by architectural exhibitions in promoting debates on architecture from the early Thirties to the Fifties of last century. Both the exhibitions and the accompanying publications such as catalogues, books and magazines, acts as significant communication media in shaping and directing architectural discourses. The first of these exhibitions was a significant historical event, which officially announced architecture of the early 20th century as “International Style” to the USA public, professional and even educational audience. Referring to Walter Benjamin’s definition of “reproduction” and to the subsequent notions of “production“ and “reproduction” discussed by Beatriz Colomina, the role of the New York MoMA architectural exhibitions as architectural media in reproducing the works of architecture and reformulating the agenda of 20th century modern architecture especially in USA, are emphasized. In the light of the arguments handled by Colomina, architectural exhibitions and associated books or catalogues are considered as “critical acts”, in which the work of architecture, and architecture itself in theoretic, aesthetic and functional terms, is interpreted, reproduced and publicized. Architectural exhibitions, being a subject in itself, puts the objects displayed into a critical process, as a medium of reproduction in which the works are re-interpreted and diffused through magazines and other press devices. Such a spreading diffusion becomes, in turn, a further object reproduced by critics, historians and professional architects.