Opened 27 February and running through to the end of May, a new exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, challenges and seeks to dismiss the legacy of Philip Johnson, the modernist master who did so much to start and cultivate MoMA. Already successful in removing Johnson’s name from a building he designed at Harvard, some seek to “cancel” him at MoMA too. The Seagram Building in New York, completed in 1958 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. A fellow gay Ohioan, at least I’m invested in hoping Philip Johnson’s youthful outrages are forgivable, that his recompense and reconciliation, and mine, are a possibility. Today, we all need what Philip Johnson died imagining he’d found: the opportunity to evolve – a chance to become better people.

Source: The Guardian March 21, 2021 05:01 UTC