In the coming autumn Design Museum will display work by the Austrian-born architect and designer Josef Frank (1885 –1967) in architecture, urban planning and furniture and textile design. Frank is an iconic figure whose oeuvre still defines our notion of post-war Nordic design. He began his career as a modernist but later went on to emphasise the importance of chance, impulses from history and different cultures and the adaptation of interior design to changing life. This exhibition at Design Museum illustrates Frank’s flexible and free conception of design.
Produced by MAK, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, the exhibition is the largest overview of Frank’s work that has ever been produced. It includes items from leading Austrian collections and material from the archives of the Svenskt Tenn company of Sweden. The curators of the exhibition are architect Hermann Czech and curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt. It is being staged in Helsinki as a collaboration of MAK and Design Museum.
‘Josef Frank was a great humanist of design, who as an architect focused on social housing, among other areas. His personal history, his being part of the Jewish minority of Vienna and fleeing antisemitism to Sweden in the 1930s, made a deep impression also on his philosophy of design. Both Frank’s thinking and his aesthetic concepts are once again highly topical’, observes Anna Vihma, who is responsible for curating the exhibition at Design Museum. The exhibition architecture at Design Museum is by Hanni Koroma.
The exhibition will be on show at Design Museum from 12 October 2018 until 17 March 2019.
Exhibition produced by MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art
In co-operation with: Kjell ochMärta Beijers Stiftelse and Austrian Embassy Helsinki
Kuvat: (yläpuolella) Josef Frankin Svenskt Tennille suunnittelema tekstiili Anakreon musta 1. Kuvaoikeudet: Svenskt Tenn. (vasemmalla) Josef Frankin muotokuva noin vuodelta 1960. Kuvaaja: Lennart Nilsson.
