Designwire Daily: from the editors of Interior Design magazine

SFMOMA To Host Bucky Fuller Exhibit

by Ian Volner | Tuesday, January 24, 2012 | 1 Comment

Olivo Barbieri, site specific_ MONTREAL 04 - Buckminster Fuller Dome, chromogenic print, 2004; 48 in. x 60 in. (121.92 x 152.4 cm); Collection SFMOMA, purchase through a gift of Barry R. Campbell, Toronto, Canada, and the Accessions Committee Fund; © Olivo Barbieri; photo: Ben Blackwell

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has announced the upcoming debut of a new exhibition on the work of engineer, architect, and all-around design polymath Buckminster Fuller. Set to open March 31, “The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area” will feature various highlights from Bucky’s nearly eight-decade career, including such crowd favorites as his Dymaxion car and 4d House. More intriguingly, perhaps, the show will also explore Fuller’s unique influence on designers and thinkers in and around the Bay Area.

Buckminster Fuller, 4D House, United States Patent Office no. 1,793, from the portfolio Inventions: Twelve Around One, 1981; screen print on Lenox paper; 30 in. x 40 in. (76.2 cm x 101.6 cm); Collection SFMOMA, gift of Chuck and Elizabeth Byrne; © The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, All Rights reserved; image courtesy SFMOMA

The latter premise is an interesting one, in light of Fuller’s association—dating from the 1960′s—with what used to be called “the counterculture.” Notes SFMOMA’s Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, “The view of Fuller as an outsider has emerged as an emblem for ‘thinking differently,’ which is a starting point for many Bay Area initiatives.” The radical, post-historical autonomy that seemed to be promised by Fuller’s geodesic domes and tensegrity structures was a catalyst, albeit a sometimes unacknowledged one, for the alternative culture that’s become a hallmark of San Francisco and its transpontine suburbs.

Nancy Newhall, Buckminster Fuller, 1948/1990; gelatin silver print; Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Estate of Nancy Newhall; photo: courtesy SFMOMA

As a special commission for the show, documentarian Sam Green will be presenting three short features on Fuller’s activities in the Bay Area during his lifetime, including his famous speech to a hippie crowd in Golden Gate Park.

Buckminster Fuller, Undersea Island-Sumbarisle, United States Patent Office no. 3,080,583,from the portfolio Inventions: Twelve Around One, 1981; screen print on Lenox paper; 30 in. x 40 in. (76.2 cm x 101.6 cm); Collection SFMOMA, gift of Chuck and Elizabeth Byrne; © The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, All Rights reserved; image courtesy SFMOMA

“The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area” runs from March 31 to July 29 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco. For more information visit, sfmoma.org or call 415-441-4777.