Christopher Mount, the former architecture and design curator at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, will open a gallery at West Hollywood’s Pacific Design Center later this month.
The Christopher Mount Gallery’s initial exhibition will be “A Modern Master: Photographs by Balthazar Korab” with an opening set for May 23. Mount also is opening a gallery at 689 Columbus Ave. in New York.
Korab, who died last year, was a photographer who specialized in architectural, art and landscape photography. Born in Budapest, he moved to France and received a diploma of architecture from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He moved to the United States in 1955.
Mount last year organized the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture From Southern California.” It was the first exhibition (and catalogue ) to examine the role of Los Angeles–based architect Frank Gehry and 34 other Los Angeles architects who followed him, including Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, Thom Mayne, Barbara Bestor and Eric Owen Moss. It caused some controversy when Gehry decided not to cooperate with Mount, saying he wasn’t comfortable with how his work would be represented.
Mount is the former executive director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art and was director of exhibitions and public programs at Parsons, the New School for Design, in New York City. He also was a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art for 14 years. He has also been a professor of art, architecture, and design history and theory at Cal Arts, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts.
A press release announcing the opening said that Mount is considering exhibitions of work by Charles and Ray Eames and architect Neil Denari.
