Five design exhibitions to see this autumn

Museums across Europe are relaunching their programmes. Between monographic displays and topical themes, here is a selection of the most exciting exhibitions.

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“Anni et Josef Albers - L'art et la vie”

Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. Until 9 January 2022. In the image, Anni Albers, Sheep May Safely Graze, 1959. Courtesy The Albers Foundation.

This acclaimed solo exhibition reconstructs in great detail the prolific avant-garde production of Mr and Mrs Albers, leading exponents of the Bauhaus movement who later emigrated to the United States and are considered one of the icons of modernist culture. Organised in close collaboration with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the exhibition displays over 350 works, including paintings by Josef and textiles and graphic works by Anni: a precious opportunity, offered by the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, to explore the path and evolution of the two individual artists, but also to investigate their production as a unicum, so strongly influenced by their mutual inspiration and faith in the emancipatory power of art. A room, specifically dedicated to their educational activity, allows visitors to relive the experience of a live classroom thanks to film archives.

“10 years Muller Van Severen, In Dialogue with the Collection”

Design Museum Gent. Until 6 March 2022. Photo: Bart Van Leuven

Hannes Van Severen and Fiennes Muller, a couple in life and work, are celebrating their 10^th anniversary with an exhibition at the Design Museum Gent. The Belgian duo saw a meteoric rise to the top of the design world. Their unmistakable minimalism has been highly successful, making the use of colour and a hands-on approach an original key to experimentation and research. Rejecting the idea of a mere showcase, the exhibition is above all an opportunity to interact with and enliven the museum's permanent collection. Searching through the archives, Muller Van Severen put together a sequence of fascinating sets that, regardless of the period and style, enhance the juxtaposition and dialogue between their production and the great international masters of the history of design. Blurring the distinction between past and present.

Waste Age, what can design do?

London Design Museum, from 23 October 2021

The excess of consumerism unleashed by a society that has learnt to mass produce on a planetary scale, but not to minimise the impact of such production, has led us to what the London Design Museum's exhibition calls the Waste Age. Design is certainly complicit in the problem, but can it also become a solution? To the cry of “Reuse, Repair, Remake”, the exhibition presents the work of designers, architects, stylists and foundations - such as Formafantasma, Stella McCartney, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Lacaton & Vassal, Fernando Laposse, Bethany Williams, Phoebe English and Natsai Audrey Chieza - who succeeded in transforming waste into a resource to be regenerated and revalued.

Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 - Today

Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, until 23 January 2021

Can a design exhibition redress the gender gap between designers? At the very least, according to the Vitra Design Museum, it can help highlight the figure of all those women designers to whom the history of design does not seem to have paid due recognition. Divided into four sections arranged in chronological order, the exhibition reprises the social inspiration of early 20th-century design through figures such as Jane Addams and Louise Brigham, and then shifts its attention to the pioneering women designers - such as Charlotte Perriand, Eileen Gray, and Clara Porset - who emerged from the 1920s to the 1950s, and then the following generation up to the 1980s. In the final part it focuses on all the great personalities - a group now as big as that of their male colleagues - who in recent years have pushed the boundaries of the profession, providing valuable insight into the sensitivity, taste and innovative spirit of women in the field of design.

Showroom Wiener Werkstätte, a Dialogue with Michael Anastassiades

MAK Geymüllerschlössel, until 2 October 2022, in Wien

Another dialogue between past and present is offered by the Mak in Vienna, which invited Michael Anastassiades - whose first Italian solo show is on view until 6 January at the ICA Foundation – to select exhibits from Ernst Ploil's Wiener Werkstätte collection. Anastassiades' evocative filter becomes an opportunity to draw attention to certain chosen objects, rediscovering the modernity within this season of design that is now considered a classic.

Grandi coppie del design nella vita e sul lavoro, tanto del passato come del presente. Dialoghi tra collezioni museali e produzioni contemporanee. Ancora, indagini sulle sfide lanciate da una gestione più sostenibile delle nostre risorse. Senza dimenticare, infine, la questione di genere e il lavoro di riscoperta di tutte quelle designer che, pioniere del loro tempo e del loro campo, possono arricchire il dibattito e lo scambio in seno alla cultura del progetto.

Sono questi alcuni dei temi che animano la nuova stagione espositiva che si apre in Europa con le proposte dei principali musei di design e arti decorative. Da Londra a Vienna passando per Parigi, Gent e Weil am Rhein, una selezione di cinque mostre da non perdere.

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