NEW YORK, NY.- In the wake of the First World War many artists and writers were seized by a new sense of political purpose. It is widely recognized that the events of 1917 and after galvanized revolutionary aspirations among European avant-gardes and the intelligentsia. Seeing Red: Hungarian Revolutionary Posters, 1919, an installation in MoMA’s Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, features posters by three of Hungary’s foremost graphic artists, Mihály Biró, Sándor Bortnyik and Bertalan Pór, all of whom had been actively involved in the Socialist revolutionary movement that culminated in the short-lived Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919. The Hungarian publishing, news, and film media were all centered in Budapest, and these posters, composed with dynamic, expressive figuration, became another potent medium for influencing popular opinion. In particular, Biró’s red-hammer-wielding man became one of the most well-known political images of the period, much repeated in Central European political iconography up to the present day. Fleeing from the right-wing backlash that followed the collapse of the Bolshevik revolution, the majority of Budapest’s cultural avant-garde sought refuge in cultural centers like Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin. The installation is organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, and Aidan O’Connor, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

“Plywood,” explained Popular Science in 1948, “is a layer cake of lumber and glue.” In the history of design, plywood is also an important modern material that has given 20th-century designers of everyday objects, furniture, and even architecture greater flexibility in shaping modern forms at an industrial scale. Plywood: Material, Process, Form, and installation in MoMA’s Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, features examples from MoMA's collection of modern designs that take advantage of the formal and aesthetic possibilities offered by plywood, from around 1930 through the 1950s. Archival photographs illuminate the process of design and manufacture in plywood. Iconic furniture by Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Arne Jacobsen appear alongside organic platters by Tapio Wirkkala (1951), Sori Yanagi’s Butterfly Stool (1956), an architectural model for a prefabricated house by Marcel Breuer (1943), and experimental designs for plywood in the aeronautics industry. The installation is organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, and Aidan O’Connor, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.