Open Access: Exploring 130 Years of American Design

Van Alen Institute has spent more than 130 years at the intersection of design ambition and civic life. Its archive, comprising thousands of competition boards, jury records, photographs, and correspondence, is one of the most significant collections of American architectural history in existence. Much of it has never been seen by the public.

Open Access: Exploring 130 Years of American Design invites five artists and design teams to respond to these materials. The exhibitions positions the archive as living material: something to be questioned, reinterpreted, and held accountable to the present. It also invites reflection on Van Alen’s 130-year influence within the field of design and upon the shaping of American cities.

Works on view include sonic installations that make structurally invisible people present; investigations of assumptions quietly embedded in the language of competition briefs; and physical reckonings with the ground beneath the buildings we celebrate.

Exhibiting artists and design team

Van Alen Institute has spent more than 130 years at the intersection of design ambition and civic life. Its archive of thousands of competition boards, jury records, travel logs, and correspondence is one of the most extensive records of American architectural history. But an archive is never neutral. It reflects the priorities, blind spots, and values of those who built it: who was invited in, whose ideas were resourced, and whose were left out entirely.

Open Access brings together artists and design teams to interrogate this record. Working directly with Van Alen’s historic materials, each asks a critical question: what does this archive tell us about who design has historically served, and who has it erased?

From sonic installations summoning uncredited voices to core samples grounding architecture in land history, these works treat the archive as living material — something to be questioned, reinterpreted, and held accountable. You are invited to explore the exhibition with curiosity and skepticism, knowing the story of who shapes our cities is still being written.

Participants:

Annie Barrett, Daniel Pittman, and Paula Vilaplana de Miguel

Kholisile Dhliwayo

Friends Making Work

PROPS SUPPLY

Gillian Waldo

Exhibition Design: NOT NOT

Graphic Design: Studio Loutsis

This exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Material support is provided by METALSISTEM and TALAS.