Mies' fertile years

摘要

After the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Altes Museum in Berlin and the Caixa Foundation in Barcelona, 'Mies van der Rohe 1905-1938' ends up at the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End — a slightly incongruous setting for the man who added 'van der Rohe' to his name to sound more distinguished. This is a fine exhibition in chronological sequence; the shortage of original drawings compensated for by models, walk-through simulations and some exceptional new chro-mogenic photographs by Thomas Ruff, Considering that Mies died in 1969, this showing of his formative work is certainly overdue. Once again we have to thank the Americans for reminding us of the pre-war avant-garde in which Mies played a part; the RIBA may have given him a gold medal in 1959, but its name does not appear in the list of sponsors for this show.