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.
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1933-1988?
"MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design was founded in 1932[57] as the first museum department in the world dedicated to the intersection of architecture and design.[58] The department's first director was Philip Johnson who served as curator between 1932–34 and 1946–54.[59] The next departmental head was Arthur Drexler, who was curator from 1951 to 1956 and then served as head until 1986.[60]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Johnson was the director at the Department of Architecture from 1930-1936 and 1946-1954." He held other leadership roles at MoMA until 1988, as a member of the board.
As if Arthur Drexler never existed...he was curator for 5 years and director for 30...why not remove all mentioning of him from all things MoMA, oh wait already happened as he’s not even mentioned in your write up or the Study Group, while he actually “had the longest curatorship in the Museum of Modern Art history. Over thirty-five years Drexler conceived, organised and oversaw trailblazing exhibitions that not only mirrored but also foresaw major stylistic design developments in industrial design, architecture and landscaping.” So in all those years it seems that Drexler never once included a work by a black architect/designer, but this has to be all about Johnson...Johnson didn’t curate or run the architecture and design department for all that long.
Was Drexler a Nazi sympathizer??
Must've been, or at least a racist as no black designer/architect's work entered the collection in his 35 years at MoMA!1!!
So, he's not a Nazi, yet you impugn his reputation, has no honorific named for him, but you impugn his reputation. Good to know.
MoMA didn't have black designers/architects in their collection but instead of going after the guy that actually was in charge of curating and the collection for 35 years, people only go after the nazi. Showing their hand that it is not about black architects deserving a place at MoMA but doing what looks good from a PR point of view...it is hollow, empty woke cancel culture bullshit and offensive to all the black designers/architects that were snubbed for all those years.
So, you're good with Nazis, got it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Thats not whataboutism you doofus, it's about the absence of black designers /architects in MoMA's collection and so I mention the one person actually in charge of curation and collection for 35 years! That doesn't make me good with Nazis, on the contrary, I point to the people actually responsible for not having black designers/architects, you know those are the facts and not your underbelly sentiments. How does that make me good with Nazis, I really don't get your angle on this. Johnson being a Nazi (sympatizer) and the lack of black designers/architects in MoMA's collection could simply be a spurious correlation since Johnson wasn't responsible for it for 35 years!
Apologies tduds for calling you a doofus. Somehow didn't see your username there, my reply was and is meant for b3ta.
I think this is ridiculous! We just can't start erasing the past because of the politic entanglements and injustices that are taking place today. Read, learn and discover from the past to influence the future and change it for the better. This demand letter does nothing to improve the current US turmoil. Whatever his beliefs were, are not relevant to what he gave us from an architectural standpoint.
Can you cogently explain how this is "erasing" the past?How not conferring, or associating, or disentangling from past associations, is erasing?
Remembering is not the same as celebrating. Erasing the past is different from declining to endorse the past. The latter is what's happening here.
Erasing Johnson from history is a huge mistake, his work and contributions to the field are too significant. However, placing a plaque next to everything he does, explaining the complexities of his Nazi sympathetic views is important and should be done. Context not erasure should be our goal.
No one's tearing down his buildings (yet).
Just give Snohetta the chance ;)
Why is his name still on the study group?
Because Nazi Sympathizer Architect wasn't specific enough.
Apparently not. Plus those capital letters are a tad flattering in this context.
This is all well and good, and obviously Philip Johnson is a problematic figure in so many ways. I feel though, that creating true equaity in architecture will require more than these piecemeal symbolic victories.
Renaming a house and attaching asteriks to everything having to do with Philip Johnson is fine, but how about addressing some real concrete barriers to equality? Architecture has been a profession of domineering white men because it's a poorly paid field that exploits its young with a narrow, self-interested view of the world that is edging it further away from relevance (where architectural institutions once had iealistic ambitions having to do with the real world and with improving the built environment, problematic as they may have been, it seems today they are only speaking to themselves in terms of post-whatever theorisms and speculations, which is much worse).
Architecture also saddles its graduates with egregious amounts of debt so that its young can go to work in a field that, again, is exploitative and built on models that rely on serving single wealthy patrons. Is it any wonder that this profession tends to exclude lower-income people and people of color? Will Sarah Whiting or any of the other deans of the big architecture schools address that earnestly? Or do they and the professioral-administrative class stand to lose from having such a conversation?
I understand that this group's purpose is to scrutinize Philip Johnson's legacy, good for them, honestly. PJ was a problematic influence-peddler and domineering kingmaker - and yes, a white suprmacist. But erasing white supremacy will require so much more than these cultural victories. Real financial and institutional support for the groups of people that architecture does not currently attract is what's required. Namely, for immigrants, the poor, and working class people. Architecture for them should be like the other professions - a conduit to a better and more stable standard of living - in order to truly increase its diversity and whittle away its increasingly myopic worldview.
It will require real work to restructure the financial and business model of the practice so that it doesn't rely on the same old sets of (often affluent and white) patrons. But of course, this is a lot harder and more boring than scoring these cultural victories. Perhaps we will go on having the same-old mostly affluent, mostly privileged bodies of students and architectural juries contemplating the output of the next, trendy "Marxist" housing studio within the myopic halls of the same-old east coast architecture schools. Just as old PJ might have done.
I always thought the MoMA should be expanding their architecture + design museum beyond the orb, as a way to get beyond the European-centric modernist narrative started by Johnson (rather than trying to police the discourse from up high). Johnson seemed like more of a power-broker than architect--he couldn't draw and constantly ripped off others (like FLW and Mies). But always a secondary and nonessential figure in the history--nothing really changes if he didn't exist (Bauhaus was always going to hit America after WW2). It seems the discourse here is an attempt to cast a shadow on the entire modern movement, rather than see its real flaw--the elite NY reflexive obsession with European trends combined with the reality of segregation. There are many more stories for these institutions to cover, but Chicago and LA will always be the true centers of American design culture.
Either way, I don't think MoMA or Glass House visitors should be coddled into a false reality of history where Johnson is invisible--his DNA is inseparable from those institutions. The concept creep is real but a moralistic fallacy (and a lot of dubious narrative leaps--like that Johnson used his power to promote Nazism rather than the reverse) that doesn't allow the next generation to wrestle with complex gray areas of reality but instead become emotionally fragile customers with no critical skills.
UPDATE: Sarah Whiting, Dean at Harvard GSD, responds to call for removal of Philip Johnson's name
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