SAGMEISTER & WALSH: Beauty at the Museum of Applied Arts

The special exhibition SAGMEISTER & WALSH: Beauty at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) Vienna is a plea for beauty and aesthetics. Both would often be sacrificed for functionality, although beauty is usually even more efficient. Various objects and texts as well as examples from areas such as graphics, design and architecture try to support this claim - unfortunately relatively unsuccessful. Both the lettering specifically developed for the exhibition, as well as the coloring and arrangement of the individual stations are quite appealing, but make no substantive contribution in terms of content.

Banal - nicely presented!

Visitors can choose the most beautiful color, the best smell or the most popular form at stations. Thanks to inserted cardboard marks and transparent tubes, these options are visible to all. Many people seem to favor the color blue, citrus and circles. To know that is basically banal.

Elsewhere, it is said that large, smooth stones were set up by our ancestors because they would have found them beautiful. Most likely, said exhibition text refers to menhirs, but this is not clear from the text. An unmarked photo accompanies the text. If the text refers to menhirs, some suspected reasons for their existence - including the function as a landmark or early calendar - are simply concealed to substantiate the desired statement.

Such a thing runs through the exhibition: in fact, much at the expense of the content is simply asserted and beautifully presented. On the one hand, that's a pity, because the actual statement that beauty should not be sacrificed to functionality is entirely justified. On the other hand, conversely, it is pointless to sacrifice functionality - and in the case of the exhibition, the content - to beauty. More can be expected from an exhibition at the MAK as well as from a successful designer duo!

If you still want to see the exhibition, you should hurry up: SAGMEISTER & WALSH: Beauty opened in October of last year and is scheduled to run until March 31, 2019. Opening hours of the MAK can be found here.

Curious? A more detailed review can also be found on my blog Murmur's Museum Reviews. Please have a look and browse individual reviews. I am happy about all interested people.