The Countryside, The Future exhibition at the Guggenheim says more about the shortcomings of its curator Rem Koolhaas than it does about the countryside, argues architecture critic Inga Saffron.

The Guggenheim museum's latest indulgence of the architect and self-proclaimed visionary Rem Koolhaas opens with two large photos taken a century apart and presented as a then-and-now juxtaposition. The first image, shot in 1909, shows three, fresh-faced Russian peasant women, simply but beautifully dressed in their Sunday-best. Two of the women wear kerchiefs tied modestly under their chins. Their expressions are serious, almost penitent, as they hold out plates of food in the traditional Slavic gesture of hospitality.
The second image, whose magenta tone echoes the colours of the women's clothing, suggests a world that has fallen far from that rural idyll. It depicts a vast indoor farm, where workers tend large flats of salad greens, factory style. They, too, wear kerchiefs, in the form of modern hairnets, as they hunker over planting beds. "What happened between these two pictures"" the accompanying text asks. For those who might have missed the heavy-handed visual message, Koolhaas explains that the 20th-century photo reveals a "stable environment where everyone ? man, woman, child ? knows their place," while "100 years later, country life has become inorganic". Koolhaas clearly thinks he is being provocative by calling the show "Countrys...