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MoMA agrees to temporarily cover Philip Johnson's name with Black Reconstruction Collective artwork

2021-03-02T13:59:00-05:00

The debate over Philip Johnson's past and ongoing legacy continues: after The ---- Johnson Study Group published an open letter calling for all institutions to remove the name of Philip Johnson from "every leadership title, public space, and honorific of any form" in response to the architect's documented Fascist past and support of white supremacy, the Museum of Modern Art, where he was the Director at the Department of Architecture, has now agreed to temporarily cover up Johnson’s name during the run of its current exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.

A 10-by-10 foot denim textile piece created collaboratively by the nonprofit Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) and printed with the group's "Manifesting Statement" will greet visitors at the exhibition entrance, blocking the museum's permanent gallery signage.

Previously on Archinect: Creative community issues a call to remove Philip Johnson's name because of his fascist past

"We accepted their exhib...

Sarah Whiting, Dean at Harvard GSD, responds to call for removal of Philip Johnson's name

2020-12-07T14:24:00-05:00

Following a letter released November 27, 2020 by The ---- Johnson Study Group calling for all institutions to remove the name of Philip Johnson from "every leadership title, public space, and honorific of any form," Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard GSD responded on December 5, 2020.

Aerial photo of the unofficially-titled "Philip Johnson Thesis House," to be renamed "9 Ash Street." Photo by Iwan Baan (more photos here)

In the letter Whiting expresses support of The Johnson Group's request, and acknowledges that Johnson's Thesis house be called "9 Ash Street" going forward.

See the full transcription of the letter below:

December 5, 2020

Subject: Letter to MoMA and the GSD

Dear Mitch and the other members of the Johnson Study Group:

Thank you for this note, which I take very seriously–both as the dean of the GSD and as a designer. Philip Johnson’s global influence in architecture in the 20th century and his grip on the field even now, ...

Creative community issues a call to remove Philip Johnson's name because of his fascist past

2020-12-03T18:00:00-05:00

The ---- Johnson Study Group, an online organization "studying the legacy of a 20th century white supremacist [Philip Johnson] who founded the most significant modern architectural institutions in the United States" has released the following letter calling for all institutions to remove the name Philip Johnson from any reference of honor.

The letter specifically cites the Museum of Modern Art, where Johnson was the director at the Department of Architecture from 1930-1936 and 1946-1954. The letter mentions Johnson used his office at MoMA and his curatorial work as a pretense to collaborate with the German Nazi party.

According to this Twitter thread, the form will eventually be opened up for additional signatures. Follow the The ---- Johnson Study Group on Instagram to stay updated.

The Man in the Glass House: new Philip Johnson biography traces the architect's Fascist past

2018-12-17T18:37:00-05:00

In “The Man in the Glass House,” Mark Lamster’s brisk, clear-eyed new biography of Johnson, we are asked to contemplate why the impresario of twentieth-century architecture descended into such a morass of far-right politics—and how, given the depths to which he fell, he managed to clamber his way not just out of it, but to the top. [...] Johnson managed to abjure his past and, on the march toward an exceptionally successful career, leave it behind.

The New Yorker reviews the new Philip Johnson biography, The Man in the Glass House by architecture critic and professor Mark Lamster, and examines how Johnson eagerly embraced Fascism before WWII and still rose to great fame as America's iconic 20th-century architect.

"Indeed, it is difficult to think of an American as successful as Johnson who indulged a love for Fascism as ardently and as openly," writes Nikil Saval in his The New Yorker piece. "His design for Father Coughlin’s rally had been inspired by his tours of Italian Fascist architecture—though the white stage was drywall, it was meant to look like marble—and, critically, by the 'febrile excitement' that attended his visit to a National Socialist youth event in Potsdam, in 1932."

Philip Johnson, the fascist

2016-04-19T13:30:00-04:00

Johnson returned home certain his life had been transformed. He found in Nazism a new international ideal. The aesthetic power and exaltation he experienced in viewing modernist architecture found its complete national expression in the Hitler-centered Fascist movement. Here was a way not merely to rebuild cities with a unified and monumental aesthetic vision for the Machine Age but to spur a rebirth of mankind itself. He had never expressed any interest in politics before. That had now changed.

"Over the next two years, Johnson moved back and forth between Europe and New York City. At home, he mounted shows and promoted modernist artists whose works he considered the best of the new. All the while, he kept an eye on the Nazis as they consolidated power. He had slept with his share of men in the demimonde of Weimar Berlin; now he turned a blind eye to Nazi restrictions on homosexual behavior, which brought imprisonment and even death sentences."

Read the rest of this fascinating excerpt from Marc Wortman's forthcoming book, 1941: Fighting the Shadow War in Vanity Fair. For more on Philip Johnson, check out these links:

Philip Johnson Was a Nazi Propagandist

2014-04-22T21:28:00-04:00

Philip Johnson was a terrible, hateful human being. And he wasn't just some casual Nazi sympathizer whispering, "maybe Hitler has some good ideas" in shadowy bars, either. He actively campaigned for Nazi causes in the U.S. and around the world. Johnson visited Germany in the 1930s at the invitation of the government's Propaganda Ministry. He wrote numerous articles for far right publications. He started a fascist organization called the Gray Shirts in the United States...

Fears for Philip Johnson headquarters if Schlumberger buildings are razed

2011-07-23T11:56:00-04:00

A partial or complete tear-down of Schlumberger’s 10-building corporate campus off Sunset Lane and Old Quarry Road could save the company millions in maintenance costs but would take a chunk out of the town’s tax roll and could include the demolition of a building designed by famed architect Philip Johnson.