Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture presents Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making, a summer-long exhibition and programming series celebrating the centennial year of Austrian-American architect R.M. Schindler’s landmark modern home in West Hollywood. Designed and built by 1922, the house began as a radical proposition for a modern collective dwelling—a campsite enclosed by concrete, glass, canvas, and redwood. Originally constructed for Schindler, his wife Pauline, and their friends Clyde and Marian Chace, the Schindler House has existed in a constant state of flux since its initial instantiation, having been painted, carpeted, curtained, dismantled, reconstructed, excavated, and reimagined by its inhabitants and admirers. The exhibition emphasizes acts of making, unmaking, and remaking that have constituted the house and its mythos over the last century. 

With a collaborative selection of reproduced historical materials assembled in vitrines by conceptual artist Kathi Hofer, the exhibition guides visitors through a gentle timeline of the Schindler House, from its inception on an unbuilt plot of land to subsequent years of preservation and institutionalization. Alongside archival materials are contemporary contributions by artists and practitioners including: Carmen Argote, Fiona Connor, Julian Hoeber, stephanie mei huang, Andrea Lenardin Madden, Renée Petropoulos, Gala Porras-Kim, Stephen Prina, Jakob Sellaoui and Peter Shire. With an emphasis on process over finality, the exhibition incorporates a rotating vitrine which accommodates the display and interpretation of new materials that emerge during the run of the show. Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making is complemented by a summer-long calendar of performances, lectures, events and parties.

Opening weekend
Public opening reception, Saturday, May 28, 2022, 7–9pm, artist talk with Kathi Hofer and Fiona Connor
Panel: Exhibition-Making in the Modern House, Sunday, May 29, 2022, 3–5pm, Co-curators in conversation with Kimberli Meyer and Sylvia Lavin
Panel: No Less than the First Modern House to Be Brought into this World—A Unique Challenge, Sunday, May 29, 2022, 5:30–7:30pm, Peter Noever in conversation with Eric O. Moss, moderated by Lilian Pfaff

Lecture series
Modernism in Mud, June 16, 2022, 7–9, Albert Narath
A Vast Furniture, June 30, 2022, 7–9pm, Carmen Argote & Anthony Carfello 
The Kings Road House, July 21, 2022, 7–9pm, Judith Sheine (Friends of Schindler House) Online 
Schindler and the Early Use of Concrete in Southern California, August 18, 2022, 7–9pm, Kenneth A. Breisch, Ann Harrer, Susan Macdonald, moderated by Chandler McCoy.
Imaging the Schindler House, August 25, 2022, 7–9pm, Mona Kuhn (Photographer), Joshua White (Photographer), and Janna Ireland (Photographer). Moderated by Silvia Perea (Curator, Art, Design and Architecture Museum, UCSB).
Schindler, Neutra, and Émigré Modernism in Los Angeles, September 8, 2022, 7–9pm, Alex Ross (Music Critic, New Yorker)

Performance series
homeLA presents jas lin 林思穎, August 26 and 27, 2022, 6–9pm
1:1:2 at the Schindler House, September 9–11, 2022, 6–8pm, Edible Poetry & Public Performance by Mai Ling: Ting-Jung Chen; Miae Son; Yela An
Pauline: An Opera by Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena, October 1, 2022, 4:30–6pm

Companion House Tours
Schindler House Companion Tours is a series of newly commissioned interpretive audio tours by artists, architects, and writers. The audio projects challenge the status of the house tour as a mode of institutional address and authoritative voice by inviting contemporary practitioners working in text, choreography, sound, and storytelling to offer new readings of the Schindler House. Contributors include Anthony Carfello, Virginia Swenson, Erik Benjamins, and Rosten Woo. Bring your headphones or borrow a listening set in-person at the Schindler House. The asynchronous audio tours are also available online for driving, walking, and other itinerant passages. 

Acknowledgments
Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making is co-curated by MAK Center Director Jia Yi Gu and historians Gary Riichirō Fox and Sarah Hearne, with support from the curatorial team Allie Smith, Ann Basu, Stratton Coffman and Tristan Espinoza. Graphic designs by Christina Huang. 

The centennial exhibition and public programs are made possible with support from: California Arts Council, City of West Hollywood, Graham Foundation for  Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Arts and Culture, Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, West Elm, Austrian Consulate General, Los Angeles, Bestor Architecture, Escher Gunewardena Architecture, Kikori, Montalba Architects, WTARCH, the MAK Center Centennial Council, and the MAK Center Patron Program.