Curator’s Voice: Paola Antonelli on “Design and the Elastic Mind”

NEW YORK—In an earlier episode of western history, as Leonardo Da Vinci might attest, finding art, design, and scientific research working together would have been no great discovery. Today, however, it can come as news to many. But as the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind,” on view at the Museum of Modern Art through May 12, indicates, a 21st-century humanism is rapidly emerging from our daily lives. The show gathers a generous array of over 200 objects and installations that reveal the great reach of design today, from designer molecules to Google maps, highlighting the provocative role of research and development, both scientific and conceptual. ARTINFO asked MoMA’s senior curator of architecture and design, Paola Antonelli, who is known for hallmark shows like 1995’s “Mutant Materials” and 2005’s "Safe: Design Takes on Risk,” to share some personal reflections on her latest humorous and thought-provoking exhibition.

For a museum exhibition, “Design and the Elastic Mind” invites unusual behaviors — lying on the floor, jumping, flailing, and having some good laughs. Are these the right reactions?

Absolutely. I have to find new ways to communicate, because people tend to treat art with reverence and respect. And they don’t know how to deal with design. You have to break the ice, and sense of humor is always one of the most powerful tricks to get under people’s skin. Also, one of the best measures of a show’s success is how children behave in it. They are tough judges: If an exhibition works for them, it’s going to be good for the adults as well.

And perhaps the most elastic of minds is that of a child. Can you explain the significance of the title and where it originated?

I have about six pages of titles that I went through. Some of them were hilarious. “Design and the Elastic Mind” is as awkward and as catchy as “Mutant Materials.”

That was a great title that really captured design in the mid-90s.

Yes. But at first, I remember every time Dick Oldenburg, director of MoMA at the time, bumped into me, he would say very nicely, “Paola, the title is horrible” — every single time! This time it was my husband telling me every day that the title was horrible! But sometimes a bit of roughness or awkwardness is what makes a title really stick. And the show is about elasticity. It’s about the stretch marks that we feel when we are having difficult days and we have to navigate through different places and time zones; it’s about the way we live today.

You’ve often spoken of design as an interpreter of the world. This show feels as if it’s addressing some sinister realities.

I tend to be a little Pollyannaish. I feel that violence, negativity, cynicism, and sinister-ism, or however it’s called, are sometimes necessary to highlight the good side of life. Designers tend to be constructive to a fault, as if they had taken a Hippocratic oath. Even when they show scenarios that are completely dystopian, they do so in order to give warning. When a designer shows you that nanophysics and nanotechnology could lead to a greater divide between classes, it’s a way to note certain possibilities before they happen.

What issues specifically stand out for you in the show?

Lack of water, overpopulation, distribution of resources, global warming, the balance between individuals and groups, viable and alternative fabrication methods that face powerful counter-lobbying by certain sectors of the industry, communication, curiosity about the other versus homogenization — there are so many issues.

I believe designers are so important to society because they are like the worms that eat the earth and then digest and expel it as something fertile to make the terrain more fruitful. They are great synthesizers, very curious of all different viewpoints. The best designers enjoy design as an affirmation of life and a way to discover the world. And they render back to the world what they have learned.

One project in the show that captures this redemptive power is James Auger’s After-Life (2001). The work proposes the after-life battery, which, having collected energy from the body of a deceased loved-one could power a flashlight or, rather courageously, a dildo.

I took around a group of pretty elderly people and focused purposefully on that object. They almost had tears in their eyes. It was beautiful to see.