Eero Saarinen Exhibit

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Over the weekend, Katie and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center to see an exhibit on Eero Saarinen, a famous Finnish-American architect. I found out about the exhibit shortly after I returned from my August trip to Boston. While there, I went to see a show in Kresge Auditorium. Kresge is a fun building because the roof is an eighth sphere, supported primarily on three points:

I'm sure I'd heard the architect's name at some point in my undergraduate years, but I knew that I had long since forgotten it. Jan was quick to respond, though. He knew it was Eero Saarinen, who also designed the MIT chapel. I was highly impressed!

The cover article of the next issue of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts magazine announced this big Eero Saarinen exhibit that would be split between the two local art galleries. Funny!

Although Saarinen is best known for his work on the MIT campus, he also designed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and a number of other terminals, embassies, churches, university buildings, and industrial campuses.

The exhibit was fun, but other than the displays of the furniture that he also occasionally designed, the exhibit was nearly all photographs and text descriptions. It might as well have been a web exhibit. It seemed particularly annoying that it was spread through the two galleries, necessitating a drive in between to see the whole exhibit in the one day. Ah, well. At least it provided Katie and me an excuse to go to 20.21, the Wolfgang Puck restaurant that resides in the Walker. Yum!

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