I’m a little surprised that no one seems to have recognized Anne Tyng as an unsung feminist heroine. Looking at the chronology of her life that accompanies her Inhabiting Geometry exhibit at the Graham Foundation, it’s easy to see the makings of a great novel, although it requires you to supply your own connections to the bare facts.
Tyng could be a symbol for generations of women who tried to compete in a man’s world, with varying degrees of success. In the chronology, you learn that she was one of the first women to receive a degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, went to work with one of the century’s great architects, gave birth to a daughter, returned to work in the great architect’s office, bought a house, left the practice to teach at the University of Pennsylvania, received her PhD at the age of 55, and published widely until her retirement twenty years later.
At age 90, she is still pursuing her life’s work — investigating a structural pedology of habitable space framed architecture based on the five platonic solids. The pieces now on display at the Graham Foundation’s Madlener House are full-sized models that illustrate her exploration of these geometric forms.
I took my own pictures, but they’re just not as good as the ones James Prinz took for the Graham:
What the chronology doesn’t say is probably more telling than what it does. It doesn’t detail Tyng’s complicated relationship with Louis Kahn, who was her mentor as well as the father of her daughter. I’m guessing that her decision to leave Kahn’s office for academia was prompted in part by her frustration with the field — as a woman, and just in general —you can’t help but note that, except for a remodeling of her parents’ house, she doesn’t have a lot of built work in her portfolio.
But her decision to enter academia also had to be colored by the fact that her personal relationship with Kahn had ended. [The film My Architect — in which Anne Tyng is interviewed — was made by Kahn’s other illegitimate child, Nathaniel Kahn.]
Despite its many strengths, I don’t think the presentation sufficiently emphasizes how this exhibition [which was originally mounted at Penn’s Institute for Contemporary Art] is a grand validation for Tyng, personally and artistically. It’s completely fitting that the show would come to the Graham, which in 1965 awarded Tyng a grant to begin much of the theoretical work that formed the underpinnings of the constructions that make up this exhibit.
I’m not sure what these pieces looked like at ICA, which is a standard white cube exhibition space. I can’t imagine, though, that they were as powerful as they are at the Graham’s Madlener House, which has proven over the last few years what a splendid venue it is for large scale work and installation.
I couldn’t resist taking a few shots of the house’s fantastic details, which have nothing to do with Tyng’s work, but just show you that any visit to the Graham Foundation is a worthwhile trip.
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