Sep
26
to Nov 1

PAUL CLEMENCE: SHAPES, RHYTHM, ABSTRACTION / Swiss Museums

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Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Switzerland by Barozzi Veiga. Photo: Paul Clemence

The Paul Rudolph Institute is proud to present PAUL CLEMENCE: SHAPES, RHYTHM, ABSTRACTION / Swiss Museums, which will open September 26, 2025 and be on view until November 1.

This exhibition of approximately 30 photographs of museums from around Switzerland printed on brushed aluminum will occupy two floors of the landmarked Modulightor Building, named for the lighting company Paul Rudolph created with Ernst Wagner in 1976.

Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland architecture by Barozzi Veiga. Photo by Paul Clemence.

Known for his ability to express the intangible side of Architecture through his abstract eyes, photographer Paul Clemence takes us on a poetic journey through Swiss museums in Geneva, Lausanne, Basel, Zurich, Chur, Bern, and St. Gallen. With a focus on textures, patterns, shapes and light, the exhibit features a diverse mix of projects by architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, Mario Botta, Christ & Gantenbein, Barozzi Veiga, Buchner Bründler, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Aires Mateus, Shigeru Ban and others.

 “This exhibit has a full circle feeling for me, since I have been photographing Swiss museums for the last 10 years, crisscrossing the country capturing these amazing structures. It has been a very inspiring journey, and I want this essay to show the variety of architectural approaches and concepts I found.” – Paul Clemence

Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, Switzerland by Buchner Bründler Architekten. Photo by Paul Clemence.

The exhibit originated as part of Le Salon Suisse, an event hosted by Switzerland Tourism in 2023 during Miami Art Week. This new edition, curated by Eshaan Mehta, will feature new, never before seen images, plus a selection from a previous exhibit held at the Consulate General of Switzerland New York, and the short film “TWO PIANOS”.  The film, a collaboration with filmmaker Axel Stasny, is an atmospheric take on two museums projects by Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

Still from short film TWO PIANOS featuring Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland by Renzo Piano Building Workshop

“Shapes, Rhythm, Abstraction offers a fresh perspective on museums, presenting them as vibrant, evolving works of art. Rather than viewing them as containers for art, this show invites us to see the buildings themselves as creations in motion. This exhibition invites viewers to step into the intersection where art, place, and presence converge, reminding us that architecture is never static” – Eshaan Mehta

As part of the program and in the framework of this collaboration, several activations will take place during the exhibition period. Among them a special talk between the artist and Nathalie Herschdorfer, renowned photography curator and director of Photo Elysée Museum in Lausanne will be held October 8th at the Modulightor Building. Additional events and programming details will be announced soon.

Kunsthaus Zurich addition by David Chipperfield. Photo by Paul Clemence.

Paul Clemence is a visual artist, filmmaker, curator, author and writer focused on the cross sections of art, design and architecture. An architect by training, Clemence is known for his expressive way of capturing the built environment. Throughout his career he has photographed iconic structures all over the world by the likes of Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Bjarke Ingels, Lina Bo Bardi, Oscar Niemeyer, Ruy Ohtake, Herzog & de Meuron, and SANAA. His fine art output, from classic B&W prints to cutting edge large scale photographic installations is exhibited regularly and part of is an important part of his practice. Beyond that his work is often featured in design and culture publications like Gagosian Quarterly, Archdaily, designboom, Architizer, Casa Vogue Brasil, Wallpaper, The Design Edit, Architects & Artisans, Everett Potter’s Travel Report, Side of Culture. Clemence is originally from Niterói, Brazil and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.


This exhibition is presented with the generous support of Switzerland Tourism.

Eshaan Mehta, curator


Exhibition details for SHAPES, RHYTHM, ABSTRACTION: Swiss Museums
Dates: September 26, 2025 - November 01, 2025
Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 1-4 PM; and by appointment other days/times.

Location: The Paul Rudolph Institute For Modern Architecture, The Modulightor Building, 246 East 58th Street, New York, NY 10022. The exhibition space is elevator accessible.

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Nov
7
to Nov 11
Exhibition

WEAVING ANNI ALBERS

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UNDER WAY 1963 - Meandering Thread on Composite Weave
1 COL H: 140 CM / 55.1 INCH
COMP GROUND 31% VISCOSE 28% COTTON 19% JUTE 15% WOOL 4% ACRYLIC 3% POLYESTER

A line that “meanders aimlessly” as Albers used to say, quoting Paul Klee, animates several of her works dated 1961-67. In the composite mingling of yarns, weave structures and colours, a randomly cast thread of wool tries to find its way across a cotton fabric of satin and jute weft threads: the pattern it traces is poised somewhere between calligraphy and a stroll. The high gauge ondé yarn worked with the fil coupé technique, the lively colour palette and the artful use of appropriate technical solutions create three-dimensionality on a complex and densely woven ground. Threads are to weaving what paints and brushes are to an artist: tools for creating visual and tactile sensations, they produce an image that lends itself to interpretation in the same way as a painting. The strong textural element recalls all the beauty of hand weaving.

DEDAR BRINGS WEAVING ANNI ALBERS TO PAUL RUDOLPH'S MODULIGHTOR BUILDING

Dedar’s collaboration with The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation arrives in New York, uniting two modernists who transformed their disciplines.

New York, November 2025

Italian textile company Dedar presents Weaving Anni Albers at the Paul Rudolph Institute in New York, pairing textile artist Anni Albers's work with architect Paul Rudolph's building—two contemporaries who moved in overlapping professional worlds during the same midcentury period and advanced modernism toward a new material complexity.

Following installations in Milan, Copenhagen, and Como, this exhibition represents the fourth iteration of Dedar's ongoing collaboration with The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.

The collection features five jacquard fabrics that translate Albers's original designs from 1936 to 1974 into contemporary production, demanding the textile expertise cultivated by Dedar's decades of research and demonstrating Albers’s conviction that weaving could be both functional craft and artistic expression.

Caterina and Raffaele Fabrizio, CEO and Creative Director of Dedar, experienced a deep sense of wonder while exploring Albers’s works at the Foundation. The exhibition seeks to capture that sense of inspiration, awe and appreciation. “The exploration of Albers’s work and the dialogue with her way of thinking have called for open mindedness in creative terms - and, above all, the desire to ‘take thread for a walk’, without any particular destination in mind, just as Albers did, inspired by the maestro Paul Klee. The reinterpretation of textures, colors, and forms originally intended for hand weaving has put our textile expertise to the test but, as she herself used to say, ‘art gives us courage’ and therefore, with every new research endeavor we expand our knowledge”, say Caterina and Raffaele Fabrizio.

Born in Germany in 1899, Albers entered the Bauhaus in 1922. She married Josef Albers in 1925 and developed her practice under the principle that threads were semantic vehicles. When the Bauhaus closed in 1933, the Alberses emigrated to the United States and joined Black Mountain College's faculty, where Anni produced both functional textiles and "pictorial weavings". Her later travels to Mexico and Peru were pivotal to her understanding of weaving as cultural language. Rudolph trained at Harvard under Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus founder who had taught Josef Albers.

Both practices emerged from Bauhaus principles but pushed beyond early modernist orthodoxy, insisting on texture, complexity, and material presence. Both figures believed that modernism did not necessitate austerity.

Albers elevated weaving to an art form while enriching artistic language by using the loom as a creative tool. Her work embodies both the precision of industrial production and the expressive freedom of unrestricted color, line, and weave.

Rudolph created architecture that engaged with texture and sensory experience. At Yale in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Albers gave guest lectures on textile arts while Rudolph served as Chairman of the Architecture Department.

The Modulightor Building's multiple levels, modulated light, and white geometric surfaces offer an environment in dialogue with the patterns, colors, and textures of the textiles, asserting that these foundational modernists operated according to similar logics of structure, rhythm, and material intelligence.

The setting design by Akari Endo-Gaut is carefully constructed to enhance the fabrics without overshadowing them. Each textile is displayed with the intention of revealing its depth – its interplay of light and shadow, the tactility of its weave, and the modernity inherent in its composition.

“My approach for designing this exhibition was deeply rooted in my desire to weave together three worlds: architecture, the designs of Anni Albers, and the fabrics themselves”, states Akari Endo-Gaut. “I used color structures as the warps and wefts connecting the textiles, with the iconic building by Paul Rudolph functioning as a loom, the fabrics becoming threads that weave the experience together. I envisioned visitors immersing themselves fully in the exhibition. I want them to see the colors, the intricate textures, and to experience not only the visual beauty but also the complex processes behind each textile”.

Visitors are invited to engage with Albers’s works in a setting that highlights the fabrics as the true protagonists. Completing the narrative is a film produced by Dedar and directed by Alessandro Del Vigna.

“It has long been our dream to see Anni Albers' materials reproduced with maximum fidelity to their original appearance. The people at Dedar have done a superlative job of realizing this desire", states Nicholas Fox Weber, Director of The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation. "We feel that Anni would have been thrilled."

The project celebrates the artist’s legacy while embracing her invitation to create and recreate. Weaving Anni Albers is a dialogue across time – the beginning of an ongoing conversation between art, design, and materiality.

Weaving Anni Albers
Paul Rudolph Institute
246 East 58th Street, Manhattan, New York, US

7 November, from 11 AM to 6 PM
8 November, from 2 PM to 6 PM
10-11 November, from 10 AM to 6 PM

Exhibition curated by Stephanie Barth & Carina Frey
Exhibition design by Akari Endo-Gaut
Sound design by Paolo Tocci
Film directed by Alessandro Del Vigna

EN ROUTE - Meandering Line on a Full Ground
1 COL H: 137 CM/53.9 INCH
COMP 42% COTTON 37% VISCOSE 12% WOOL 5% ACRYLIC 4% POLYESTER

The jacquard inspired by Under Way 1963 develops Albers research on yarn as a subject: not just a mere functional element but a bearer of meaning. In this full-grounded version, Dedar affords a protagonist role to the raised effect of the lancé weft. The motif that extends for the entire fabric width, far reaching and variegated in its composition, stands out clearly from the ground; it reconciles graphic purity with the lavish variety of yarns, particularly evident in the selvedge fringes. The curvilinear narration, consisting of an uninterrupted thread, is especially impacting when used for panels, screens, or decorative applications; as a curtain, the fabric drapes softly, to further enhance its beauty.

ANCIENT WRITING 1936 - Zapotec Graduated Geometries
2 COL
COL. 001 H: 132 CM/52 INCH
COMP 79% COTTON 7% SILK 6% POLYESTER - TREVIRA CS - 6% WOOL 2% METALLIC POLYESTER

COL. 002 H: 133 CM/52.4 INCH
COMP 78% COTTON 10% POLYESTER - TREVIRA CS - 6% WOOL 4% POLYESTER 2% VISCOSE

The inspiration that Albers drew, as a keen traveler, from the Native American cultures, leaves its unmistakable mark here. The motif is permeated with all the magic of a visit to the Zapotec site of Monte Albán, in Mexico: warmth and archaic echoes mitigate the modern rigor of geometric motifs. Six weft threads are alternated. Of the graduated effect, some lines are clearly visible while others barely emerge from the dark context (as in the original) or from the ivory shades of the light colored variant. An unfaltering textile expertise has perfectly rendered the different chromatic and textural depths of the hand-woven artifact, also thanks to inserts, fil coupé and an attentive choice of materials.

DRAWING XVI (B) 1974 - Rhythmic Nuances on Jacquard Velvet
3 COL H: 139 CM / 54.7 INCH
COMP 45% COTTON 35% VISCOSE 12% POLYESTER 8% LINEN

Triangles animate various designs by Albers, who translated them into an irregular quality, a reciprocal penetration of rhythm and a shunning of repetition. “DR XVI (B)”, a project she expressed exclusively on paper, now provides a cue to confer a new dimension to her artistic work — which, until today, had never generated a velvet. The curly textural fabric with vertical evolution contrasts with the softness of the velvet pile: the white variant, which is dense, matt, and cottony, and the colored one with its silky look.

UNTITLED 1948 - Light and Shade on a Modernist Damier Motif
3 COL H: 134 CM / 52.8 INCH
COMP COL. 001 38% WOOL 30% VISCOSE 10% POLYAMIDE 9% JUTE 9% COTTON 3% OTHER FIBERS 1% SILK

COL. 002,003 37% WOOL 30% VISCOSE 10% POLYAMIDE 9% JUTE 9% COTTON 4% OTHER FIBERS 1% SILK

In the forties, Albers’ textile research spilled over into art in the strictest sense of the term. “Untitled”, an energy-packed damier motif, is an encounter between darkness and light, as in the illuminated skyscrapers of a nocturnal New York landscape. Echoes of the spell this city cast on the artist are melded with the native art influences of Latin America.

Dedar provides a new take on the modernist abstraction of the original in a complex all-over pattern: a meticulous yarn research supports the subtle play of color and materials, while the fil coupé technique confers a luminous accent to the ivory and green variants. Albers’ artistic afflatus is treated as live matter: it is given a contemporary significance, also thanks to the new variants in ivory and green which the fil coupé technique enhances with luminous accents.

About Dedar

Founded in 1976, Dedar is headquartered near Como, Italy, in the historic silk district. The company develops and produces curtain and upholstery fabrics and wallcoverings through ongoing dialogue with a textile supply chain of excellence.

dedar.com | @dedarmilano

Press contacts
Europa: P:S | dedar@p-s.it
USA: Head and Hand Communications | dedar@headandhand.com

About the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation

The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation advances the vision of Anni and Josef Albers through exhibitions, publications, education, and research. Josef Albers established the Foundation in 1972 with the aim of "the revelation and evocation of vision through art”.

albersfoundation.org | @albers_foundation

About the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture

The Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of modern architecture including influential American architects Paul Rudolph, Myron Goldfinger and Andrew Geller. Established to honor their contributions to modern architecture, the Institute seeks to further an understanding of their innovative designs and architectural philosophy.

paulrudolph.institute | @paulrudolphinst

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Jul
2
to Sep 20

Architecture = Art: The Collection of Susan Grant Lewin

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The Paul Rudolph Institute is proud to present
Architecture = Art: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, which will open July 2, 2025 and be on view until September 20.

This exhibition of approximately 50 architectural presentation drawings by celebrated architects from around the world will occupy two floors of the landmarked Modulightor Building, named for the lighting company Paul Rudolph created with Ernst Wagner in 1976.

This collage by Eric Owen Moss and others will be on view at the Paul Rudolph Institute

The drawings—meticulously drawn by hand or digitally rendered—come from the personal collection of Susan Grant Lewin, a longtime advocate for contemporary architecture and design. Created as conceptual or presentation works, they reflect drawing as an essential part of the architect’s expressive process—less about documentation, more about persuasion and imagination. Among the architects represented are: Eileen Grey, Daniel Arsham, Frank Gehry, Jesse Reiser, Hani Rashid, Steven Holl,  Aldo Rossi, Michael Graves, James Wines, Stanley Tigerman, John Hejduk, and many others. Their work spans multiple generations and ideologies, yet all share a deep commitment to drawing as both a communicative tool and an artistic medium.

“These drawings transcend function,” says Lewin. “They are personal, poetic, and often provocative. They show how architecture begins with a bold visual idea.”

In addition to the drawings, the exhibition includes a selection of photographs by architectural photographers like Ezra Stoller, Robin Hill, Norman McGrath, Paul Clemence, and others.  These images are not merely records of completed buildings but carefully composed works that stand on their own as art. Like the drawings  they express atmosphere, intention, and the emotional experience of architectural space. They underscore the role photography plays in shaping our understanding of the built environment.

This drawing by Arata Isozaki and others will be on view at the Paul Rudolph Institute

Susan Grant Lewin’s longstanding commitment to design and innovation extends beyond collecting. She was architecture and design editor at both HFN, Fairchild Publications and House Beautiful Magazine, each for 12 years. In the 1980s, she joined Formica Corporation as Creative Director, originally to promote Colorcore, a new material specifically aimed at architects. She created Surface & Ornament, an exhibition that displayed  both the winners of a design competition and the conceptual objects of a group of invited entrants, most notably the Colorcore fish by Frank Gehry. She subsequently started her own marketing and PR firm Susan Grant Lewin Associates, representing clients like Design Miami and Dyson. Lewin is also known as a prominent collector of contemporary art jewelry. She has had exhibitions and donated important works to Yale University Art Gallery, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum, Lowe Museum of the University of Miami and SCAD Museum of Art at the Savannah School of Art and Design.

Eshaan Mehta, curator, with Isabella Fernandez

Exhibition details for Architecture = Art: The Collection of Susan Grant Lewin
Dates: July 2, 2025 - September 20, 2025

Opening reception: Wednesday July 02, 2025, 6-9 PM

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 1-4 PM; and by appointment other days/times.

Location: The Paul Rudolph Institute For Modern Architecture, The Modulightor Building, 246 East 58th Street, New York, NY 10022. The exhibition space is elevator accessible.

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