Paul Rudolph's first major American exhibition comes to the Met this fall

The first major American exhibition dedicated to late modernist pioneer Paul Rudolph is coming to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall. Organized by curator Abraham Thomas in collaboration with the Library of Congress’s Rudolph Archive, the show will trace the architect’s development through 80 artifacts beginning with his first experimental houses in Florida and continuing through to his Lower Manhattan Expressway and other unbuilt megastructures and utopian visions. 

What will be the Met’s first major exhibition of modern architecture in nearly fifty years will show how Rudolph responded to the prevailing social and economic currents of his time. Many of his other New York area projects are included, along with examples of his legendary drawing practice and a question into the divisiveness of the Brutalist style he pursued steadfastly (and to his detriment) in the 1960s and 70s. 

"The refusal to be categorized makes Rudolph a challenging architect to summarize, but this same quality also makes him a fascinating topic for research, driving new audiences to discover, or rediscover, his work every day," Thomas said in a preview. "Rudolph’s intricate, visionary drawings and dramatic completed buildings represent a singular voice within the crowded, variable terrain of architectural late modernism — one that will continue to prove both spellbinding and confounding for many years to come."

The dates for Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph are September 30, 2024, to March 16, 2025.