Lina Bo Bardi's famous glass easels and a 1960s expo pavilion by Aldo van Eyck have both been reconstructed in Lisbon, for the exhibition Art on Display at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
The landmark show, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese art museum, recreates some of the most groundbreaking exhibition displays created by architects in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.
As well as Bo Bardi and Van Eyck, it also features designs by Alison and Peter Smithson, Carlo Scarpa, Franco Albini and Franca Helg.
Art on Display features exhibition designs from the 1940s, '50s and '60s
Curators Penelope Curtis and Dirk van den Heuvel want to show that exhibition design, particularly by architects, was more radical in the midcentury than it is today. By placing artworks in non-traditional contexts ? examples include paintings without frames and sculptures on the floor ? these architects were trying to democratise art for a postwar audience.
"The nexus of art and architecture was very important around the second world war and in the postwar decades, in terms of rethinking how art could help develop a more egalitarian society," explained Van den Heuvel during a tour of the exhibition.
A pavilion by Aldo van Eyck has been partly reconstructed at the museum entrance
The curators worked with architect Rita Albergaria to reconstruct fragments of the original exhibition displays. In many cases they only had photographs to work from, so had to judge a lot of the dimensi...