by Jon Lackman | 12 May 2008 | Architecture, Museums
The March 2008 issue of JSAH contains a review by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers of the recent Robert Moses exhibition curated by JSAH editor Hilary Ballon. Following the review is an “Editor’s Note”: “Hilary Ballon, JSAH editor, was not involved in commissioning, editing, or publishing this review.” One is left to imagine that these roles were filled by the issue’s Exhibition Review Editor, Anthony Alofsin. For what it’s worth, Ballon and Alofsin collaborated on the 2005 book Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower, according to the Rizzoli website. (JSAH‘s website indicates that Ballon’s and Alofsin’s editorships are now held by David Brownlee and David DeLong respectively.)
Rogers seems inclined to pass judgment on the exhibition’s arguments, but hesitant to follow through. (Its main argument, in the words of The New York Times, is that “too little attention has been focused on what Moses achieved, versus what he destroyed, and on the enormous bureaucratic hurdles he surmounted to get things done.”) The closest that Rogers gets is with statements such as these: “[The exhibition] seeks to resuscitate the reputation of the master builder” [emphasis added]. “Although Moses is rightly cast as the villain in these fights, he operated within the urban planning orthodoxies of the time.”
She does criticize the exhibition design. Of the Queens Museum section she writes that
The relatively small, monochromatic renderings hung in high-ceilinged galleries, a confusing spatial flow, and hard-to-read labels are mitigated by the fascinating subject matter.
This is the second time Rogers calls something in the exhibition “fascinating.” But is she saying that the exhibition is fascinating, or just that Robert Moses is always fascinating? This line from her concluding paragraphs would seem to suggest the latter:
Overall, it is the subject of these three related, ephemera-heavy exhibitions, not their design presentation, that holds our attention.
