Exhibition

  • Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion
    Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger
    Curator
    Philadelphia Museum of Art
    Sep 20, 2011 to Mar 25, 2012
  • GRANTEE
    Philadelphia Museum of Art
    GRANT YEAR
    2011

View of Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion, Exhibition Gallery, Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2011. © Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is organizing Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion (September 2011–March 2012). The exhibition is the first major presentation of Hadid's work in the United States since the Guggenheim Museum’s 2006 exhibition and the first to focus on the architect's furniture and objects in a setting of her own creation. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the installation includes furniture, metalwork, jewelry, lighting, and other objects, and an animated video projection illustrating the complex geometries that define Zaha Hadid's cross-disciplinary work. Fracturing traditional rules of space and form, Hadid's undulating design for the exhibition will transform the gallery and its contents into a singular fluid, dynamic composition. A striated video gallery wall, sinuous floor graphics, and designed objects demonstrate how the fields of architecture, urbanism, and design are in interrelated in Hadid's practice.

Zaha Hadid pursued architectural studies at London's Architectural Association in 1972 and received her diploma in 1977. She joined the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), opened her independent practice in London in 1979, and in 1982, gained international recognition when her submission The Peak won the competition for a leisure club in Hong Kong. In 2004, Hadid became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Today, her suggestive vision is being transformed into buildings all over the world. Hadid exercises final responsibility for all design work and decisions related to the exhibition content and installation.

Founded in 1876, The Philadelphia Museum of Art—in partnership with the city, the region, and art museums around the globe—seeks to preserve, enhance, interpret, and extend the reach of its great collections in particular, and the visual arts in general, to an increasing and increasingly diverse audience as a source of delight, illumination and lifelong learning. The PMA's neoclassical building was completed in 1928 by the City of Philadelphia and houses more than 200 galleries and public spaces. The PMA is also comprised of the Rodin Museum, two historic Fairmount Park Houses, the Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden, and the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building.