Exhibit Columbus has built another platform to high-profile visibility.
This time it comes through an inaugural curatorial fellowship — one featuring two design leaders with a global reputation.
The duo will provide programming guidance and direction along with the Exhibit Columbus staff for the organization’s fall symposium — which could be virtual and/or in person — and its 2021 exhibition of temporary architectural installations highlighting the city’s celebrated Modernist past and present.
Landmark Columbus Foundation, Exhibit Columbus’ parent agency, has announced that Chicago architect, curator and editor Iker Gil and Los Angeles-based critic, editor, author and curator Mimi Zeiger will be among the first of a series of international leaders to influence a reshaped Exhibit Columbus, a popular celebration of art, architecture, design and community.
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The pair has worked together on a range of major projects in the past 12 years. That includes being co-curators with two others of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest art and architecture festival that attracts about half a million people.
“It’s great to be able to work with Iker again,” Zeiger said. “We both admire the other’s work.”
Iker said he would hope some of their work could help position “Columbus as something of a think tank even for the rest of the U.S.”
In the past, Exhibit Columbus staff has worked with a 12-person board on its symposiums and exhibitions that began in 2016. Exhibit Columbus leaders still champion the expertise of those leaders, said Anne Surak, Exhibit Columbus director.
“But we want to use this as an opportunity to bring new voices to the project,” Surak said. “We really feel like allowing some fresh eyes to look at the program and how we do things, and then apply their expertise would be really interesting. And now we’ll have that evolve every two years.”
That means a new selection of curators, possibly varying in number, will be brought in every two years to keep the events fresh.
Surak said most other architectural symposiums and exhibitions work that way.
Gil, a native of Spain, is founder of MAS Studio in Chicago and the and the nonprofit journal MAS Context and executive director of the SOM Foundation. The SOM Foundation’s goal “is to advance the design profession’s ability to address the key issues of our time by bringing together and supporting groups and individuals, each with the highest possible design aspirations,” according to its website.
Zeiger is the author of books such as “New Museums: Contemporary Museum Architecture Around the World” and “Tiny Houses.” Her writing about architecture, art, design, and urbanism — and also female architects — has appeared in the New York Times, Metropolis, Dwell, Domus, Dezeen, and Architectural Review
She was warmly received when she spoke and served as emcee at The Commons at the 2019 Exhibit Columbus Miller Prize installation designs preview in January 2019. But she most remembers being warmly received when she visited Columbus years ago and stopped by one of her favorite structures here — Fire Station No. 4 designed by noted architect Robert Venturi on 25th Street.
“Talk about welcoming,” she said. “The firefighters just let us wander in and showed us everything including their bunks and where they store the hoses. We got the full tour. As an architecture fangirl and geek, I just couldn’t get enough.”
Gil first visited Columbus about 10 years ago, and became impressed with what he calls “its huge architectural history.”
He appreciated the city’s Modernist foundation, too.
“The city’s architectural legacy, I believe, was created from a very forward-thinking idea about what it means to truly contribute to a community,” Gil said.
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Iker Gil is a Chicago-based architect, editor, and curator. He is the director of MAS Studio, a collaborative architecture and design firm as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of the design journal MAS Context. He teaches architecture studios at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, since 2019, he is the executive director of the SOM Foundation. Gil has collaborated with architects, artists, and designers on projects including Geometry of Light at the Barcelona Pavilion and Farnsworth House, Inside Marina City, and the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin signage standards.
Favorite Columbus structure: The Miller House and Gardens property for the teamwork among stalwart designers.
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Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. She was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Curatorial projects include Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, Shenzhen. Zeiger has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Architect. She is an opinion columnist for Dezeen and former West Coast Editor of The Architects Newspaper. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She is faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and in the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design.
Favorite Columbus structure: The Cummins Conference Center for its openness as a bank in the 1950s.
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Exhibit Columbus is an exploration of architecture, art, design, and community that activates the design legacy of Columbus. It creates a cycle of programming that uses this context to convene conversations around innovative ideas and commissions site-responsive installations in a free, public exhibition. For more, visit exhibitcolumbus.org
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Landmark Columbus Foundation cares for, celebrates, and advances the cultural heritage of Columbus. To fulfill its mission Landmark Columbus Foundation directs three locally-engaged and globally-connected programs that are interwoven in their impact and networks: Landmark Columbus, Exhibit Columbus, and Columbus Design Institute. For more, visit landmarkcolumbusfoundation.org
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