Consuming Modernism: Erich Mendelsohn, House Beautiful, and the Museum of Modern Art

Masculinist histories of modern architecture have shied away from acknowledging the degree to which it was a fashion and, as such, successfully marketed to women, often by other women. Considering the contribution of House Beautiful to its reception in the United States begins to redress interpretations that also marginalize men, such as Erich Mendelsohn, who primarily designed building types, such as department stores and cinemas, frequented predominantly by women. In particular it challenges the primacy of Museum of Modern Art to a development for which it should instead share generous credit with female journalists writing in the shelter press and in the arts pages of daily newspapers. Acknowledging the role of these women as tastemakers also challenges us to understand what about the new style appealed to their readers.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is professor of art history at University College Dublin. She has also been a visiting professor at the Ruhr Universität Bochum, and the Yale School of Architecture. Her books include Architecture since 1400 and Modernism as Memory: Building Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany. She holds a European Research Council Advanced Grant for the project “Expanding Agency: Women, Race, and the Global Dissemination of Modern Architecture,” which has also been supported by an Ailsa Mellon Senior Fellowship from the National Gallery of Art.

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Image caption: Cover, House Beautiful, Maurice Day, January 1927