Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson explore the groundbreaking collaboration between Barr, MoMA’s first director, and Johnson, its first curator of architecture, in promoting Bauhaus-inspired modernist design in America. The exhibition, shown at the Grey Art Gallery and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, highlights their efforts to elevate architecture, furniture, and industrial objects into the realm of art. Their contributions helped introduce modernist design to the U.S., shaping the aesthetic of the International Style And influencing American art and culture throughout the 20th century.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Barr and Johnson, both in their twenties, took on the challenge of transforming American design, Barr, a 27-year-old art history teacher, and Johnson, a 23-year-old Harvard philosophy graduate, met at Wellesley College. Their shared vision to merge art and modernism set the course for their influential careers at MoMA. After the museum’s opening in 1929, just days after the stock market crash, they used MoMA as a platform to redefine the boundaries of art and design, extending the scope beyond painting and sculpture to include architecture, photography, graphic design, furniture, and film.
This collaboration is the focus of the exhibition Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson, which debuted at the Grey Art Gallery in New York in 2017 and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2016. The exhibition highlighted how Barr and Johnson’s collaboration popularized the International Style in the U.S. and expanded modernism’s influence across multiple disciplines.
The exhibition Partners in Design is structured thematically, with its opening section titled The Bauhaus: “Mecca of Modernism.” This part introduces the Bauhaus, the influential institution founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, which played a key role in shaping modernist design principles. Barr visited the Bauhaus in 1927, and Johnson made several trips between 1929 and its closing in 1933, focusing on the school’s Dessau period. There, they observed how architecture and industrial design could coexist, promoting functional, mass-produced objects without ornamentation. These ideas informed MoMA’s exhibitions, such as Bauhaus: 1919-1928 (1938), and Machine Art (1934), which showcased industrial objects like ball bearings and kitchenware as artistic creations, emphasizing their design purity.
The exhibition Partners in Design features seventy objects, including furniture, textiles, industrial products, and exhibition catalogs, providing a comprehensive look at how Barr and Johnson’s vision shaped North American modernism. Among the objects on display are Christian Dell’s Type K table lamp and Marcel Breuer’s iconic B32 chair, which still exemplify the high standards of design for mass production.
The exhibition also explores how Barr and Johnson’s apartments applied modernist principles, which served as personal laboratories for design experimentation. Johnson’s East 52nd Street apartment, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Barr’s apartment at 2 Beekman Place were outfitted with furniture by Mies and Donald Deskey, reflecting their continuous exploration of modernism. Visitors to the exhibition could experience these interiors through advanced 3D technology that recreated their living spaces.
MoMA’s exhibitions in the 1930s and 1940s played a critical role in disseminating modernist ideals. Shows such as Modern Architecture: International Exhibition (1932), Objects: 1900 and Today (1933), and the consumer-focused Useful Objects series (1938–1949) helped familiarize American audiences with the International Style and rational design. Johnson’s 1934 Machine Art exhibition, which toured 19 venues, showcased the beauty of industrial objects like an Electrochef stove and a Monel sink, further promoting streamlined aesthetics to a public accustomed to ornamented designs.
The exhibition’s final section, Spreading the Gospel of Modern Design, highlighted he influence of American designers like Charles and Ray Eames and Eva Zeisel. It showcased how European modernist ideas, brought by émigré artists fleeing Nazi Germany, combined with American ingenuity to shape design in the U.S. during and after World War II.
In addition to the exhibition, Partners in Design is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, edited by David A. Hanks, curator of the Liliane and David M. Stewart Program for Modern Design. The publication includes essays by prominent scholars and curators, offering further insight into Barr and Johnson’s collaborative efforts to redefine design in America.
While modern design’s prominence in North America was not inevitable, it was the result of Barr and Johnson’s shared vision and efforts at MoMA. Their work helped elevate everyday objects to the level of fine art, fundamentally changing the way design was perceived and appreciated in the United States.
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