SPEED
LIMITS
EXHIBITION

  

Presented in the Canadian Center for Architecture’s main galleries, Speed Limits was on view from May 20, 2009 to November 8, 2009 and featured more than 240 objects from the collections of the CCA and Wolfsonian. Covering the period from 1900 to the present, the exhibition analyzed the evolution of the process of production and construction, the beginnings of prefabrication, the household, traffic and transit, and the workplace, as viewed through the prism of speed, and focused on the opposite poles of productivity and hyperactivity. The exhibition was curated by Jeffery T. Schnapp, while the exhibition design was by Michael Maltzan Architecture and the graphics by Project Projects.

Each room in the exhibition was devoted to a particular theme related to the modern fixation on speed: circulation and transit, construction and the built environment, efficiency, the measurement and representation of rapid motion, and the mind/body relationship. Books, photographs, advertising posters, architectural drawings, publications, and videos were all used to illustrate the curatorial vision, with MMA’s armature serving to emphasize how the accelerating pace of development in science and technology, art and culture, and the built environment has effected the psyche of individuals since the beginning of the 20^th century: videos were exhibited on an expansive, arcing set of monitors, evoking motion while simultaneously guiding the movement of visitors through the space; framed objects were mounted on sculptural armatures, jutting out at viewers as if they had been shot out of the wall, and; podiums in the exhibition recalled the aesthetics of early 20^th century art movements fixated on speed and modernity, including Futurism and Dada.