The MAK's 'Polymath'

makbody.jpg

The exhibition, "Otto Neurath. Gypsy Urbanism," opens this Tuesday, November 3, at the MAK Center in West Hollywood. The show runs through the end of January, 2010.

From the particularly interesting press release:

"At a time when contemporary culture is dominated by mass media and we are all glued to many screens, it is fascinating to contemplate the career of little-known Austrian sociologist, Otto Neurath (1888-1945), a polymath whose intellectual and moral compass - forged in the embers of World War I - led him to predict the dramatic growth of the knowledge economy and to develop tools for a universal pictorial language. Ever in the interest of advancing participatory forms of democratic exchange, Neurath was by turn an academic, economic minister, housing administrator, museum director and philosopher of science. He collaborated with the leading planners, designers and artists of his time, - among them Adolf Loos, Josef Frank, Le Corbusier, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and key New Deal intellectuals - and his work had a profound influence on a range of disciplines, including architecture, philosophy, economics, urbanism and graphic design."

The MAK Center is famously located at the Schindler House. The MAK team are also the curators of the ongoing Urban Future Initiative, of which TTLA is a longtime fan.**

Image courtesy MAK Center

**Disclosure: TTLA's blogger has, at another gig, booked various UFI fellows to give public presentations.

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Think Tank L.A. is a slow-boil chronicling of the goings-on at policy centers, research institutions, and the like in and around the Southland – and beyond. The blog covers the tanks themselves, the people who work at them, and the big ideas so often born at tanks. It's written by Jeremy Rosenberg

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