Side Gallery

The exhibition was curated to investigate the thinking of Clara Porset and the concepts she proposed on modern design as a writer. With plans, photographs, models, objects and furniture from private collections in Mexico, as well as documents from the Clara Porset Archive at the Center for Industrial Design Research the exhibition aimed to show an unknown side of the designer; that of a thinker who now joins her work already known as a creator and promoter of design.

The work of Clara Porset, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Cynthia Sargent, and Sheila Hicks had never been shown together before. While some of these artists and designers knew one another and collaborated together, they were from different generations, and their individual work encompassed a range of medias varying from furniture and interior design to sculpture, textiles, photography, and prints. There is however a common denominator for these makers: Mexico, the country in which they all lived or worked between the 1940s and 1970s. During this period, they all drove projects that breached disciplinary boundaries and national divides.

Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915–1985 was a groundbreaking exhibition that explored the design dialogue between California and Mexico during 1915 and 1985. The exhibition was compiled of four main themes; Spanish Colonial Inspiration, Pre-Hispanic Revivals, Folk Art and Craft Traditions, and Modernism, exploring how modern and anti-modern design movements defined both locales throughout the twentieth century.

At the gallery the Factoría Habana in the island’s capital, an exhibition in 2016 exhibited a sample of the interior designs of the celebrated Cuban designer Clara Porset (1895-1981), a pioneer of industrial design in Latin America. Much credit is due to Clara Porset, of which a lot had not been recognized. This exhibition set out to ensure praise and acknowledgement from her place birth.

Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940–1978 explored how design transformed the domestic landscape of Latin America in a period marked by major stylistic developments and social political changes. Away from the mass destruction of World War II, many Latin American countries entered a period of economic growth in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1950s, which resulted in the modernization of major cities.

20th-century design was profoundly shaped and enhanced by the creativity of women as muses of modernity and shapers of new ways of living, and as designers, patrons, performers, and educators. This installation, drawn entirely from MoMA’s collection, celebrates the diversity and vitality of individual artists’ approach to the modern world.

In Mexico, chairs and seats have served as more than utilitarian pieces; at different moments in history, they have displayed very varied symbolisms and functions that reveal their importance to us in everyday life in public as well as private spaces, many of them becoming true icons in the history of design. Ana Elena Mallet curated a historically reverting exhibition celebrating the museums most acclaimed collections in conjunction with its 30th birthday.