Veronika kellndorfer at Elmhurst Art Museum

June 6, 2018

Veronika Kellndorfer is featured in the exhibition Mies’s McCormick House Revealed: New Views at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois. This three-part exhibition provides background, context, and visibility to Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick House on the occasion of restorations to its original façade, showing the building’s full exterior for the first time in nearly 25 years. 

The McCormick House (1952) is one of only three single-family homes built by Mies, one of the greatest architects of the 20th Century. The home is a rare and important example of his mature style, incorporating elements of his celebrated designs for the Farnsworth House and 860-880 Lake Shore Drive. The first gallery contains historical drawings, photographs, and models of the prefab prototype built in Elmhurst. Mies’s ‘dream home of tomorrow’ is showcased along with proposals for larger prefab developments in the western Chicagoland suburbs.

The second gallery of New Views is the only U.S. venue for the exhibition Glass Houses, which has traveled from São Paulo, Brazil. The international show contextualizes the McCormick House with iconic Mid-century homes from across North and South America: the Eames House (Case Study House #8), Philip Johnson’s Glass House, Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe, and Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House—the original site of the exhibition.

The third and final gallery of New Views contains photographs by contemporary artists responding to reflections and transparency on the iconic glass walls designed by Mies, including works by Scott Fortino, Veronika Kellndorfer, Luisa Lambri, and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. Described by a prefab advertisement used by Robert Hall McCormick III, “The glass wall doesn’t merely disclose a section of the outdoors but reveals to the expansive eye and spirit a constant weather-changing spectacle from the earth up, of plant and creature.” 

Mies’s McCormick House Revealed: New Views opens on June 10 and is on view through August 26, 2018.