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 teams:

• Friends Making Work
• Matthew Bohne
• Kholisile Dhliwayo
• Annie Barrett, Daniel Pittman, and Paula Vilaplana de Miguel
• Gillian Waldo