Event Item: 00114

Landmark exhibition on Buckminster Fuller

Exhibition: 26th Jun 2008 to 21st Sep 2008

Source: http://www.whitney.org

Explores the legacy of Buckminster Fuller: visionary American inventor, designer, environmentalist, and humanitarian. "Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it." R. Buckminster Fuller, "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" (1969).

This summer, the Whitney Museum of American Art is presenting Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe, the first major American exhibition in decades devoted to the visionary mind and work of Buckminster Fuller, and the most inclusive show to date of Fuller's work.

On view from June 26 to September 21, 2008, the show is co-curated by Michael Hays, Adjunct Curator of Architecture, and Dana Miller, Associate Curator at the Whitney; the curators are working in association with the Department of Special Collections of the Stanford University Libraries and with the cooperation of the Fuller family. The exhibition travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in the summer of 2009.

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was one of the great American creative thinkers of the 20th century. Philosopher, forecaster, designer, poet, inventor, and advocate of alternative energy, Fuller is probably best known as the originator of the geodesic dome, but his theories and innovations engaged fields ranging from mathematics, engineering, and environmental science to literature, architecture, and visual art.

Fuller was one of the great transdisciplinary thinkers and made no distinction between these spheres as discrete areas of investigation. He devoted much of his life to closing the gap between the sciences and the humanities, a schism he felt prevented a comprehensive view of the world. He believed in the significant interconnectedness of all things and concluded that certain basic structures and systems underlie everything in our world. Today his prophetic concepts are a touchstone for discussions of issues including environmental conservation, the manufacture and distribution of housing, and global organization of information.

As curators Hays and Miller write in their catalogue introduction, "Fuller sought to produce comprehensive anticipatory design solutions that would benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the fewest resources…Starting as he did from the universe and ending up with visual-spatial models with which to ponder universal philosophical problems in the here and now, it is not surprising that Fuller has had a tremendous impact on the visual arts and architecture. His sensibilities and modes of working were deeply aesthetic and many of his closest friends and supporters were artists. Today, his lessons take on an even greater relevance. Fuller's concepts are ripe for reexamination by artists, architects, designers, scientists, and poets…The exhibition and catalogue also are intended for an entire generation who know little or nothing about Fuller but share his curiosity about nature's structures or his sense of urgency about economies, ecologies, and their interactions."

This exhibition offers an opportunity to study the pioneering thinking of an intensely
passionate, prolific, and idiosyncratic individual. It includes original examples of Fuller's important works from both private and public collections, among them the sole extant Dymaxion car; models of the Wichita House; the Tetrascroll portfolio; several geodesic study models; as well as numerous sketches, notebooks, and other artifacts. Many of the artifacts and documents in the show are held in the R. Buckminster Fuller Archive at the Stanford University Libraries.

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021