This is the first exhibition to explore the design, construction process, and role of a deeply involved client in the creation of Richard Neutra’s first building on the east coast of the United States, Windshield. Commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. John Nicholas Brown in the mid-1930s as their summer house on Fishers Island, New York, Windshield played a significant role in the development of modern architecture in the United States and in shaping Neutra’s design philosophy. The house was completed in 1938, severely damaged by a hurricane a few months later, rebuilt, and subsequently destroyed by fire in 1975.

The exhibition brings together original renderings, sketches, working drawings, and blueprints by Neutra; examples of the intense correspondence between Neutra and the Browns; photographs of the finished house; computer-generated renderings of the interior color scheme as well as exterior views; and examples of furnishings the Browns chose for the house. Two architectural models are featured as well as excerpts from home movies shot by Mr. Brown, documenting his encounter with modern architecture and his life at Windshield.

Named for the extensive use of glass on its exterior, Windshield represented a radical break with conventional American notions of residential design. As activist patrons of contemporary art and architecture, the Browns were among those enlightened philanthropists whose engagement was crucial to the development of modernism in the United States

This exhibition was organized by the Harvard University Art Museums in collaboration with the Harvard Design School and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and was funded by the Graham Gund Exhibition Fund.

Related Event
Dreams, Design, and Disaster: Neutra’s Windshield
Friday, November 16, 6:30 p.m.
Piper Auditorium, Harvard Design School, 48 Quincy Street
Free admission

J. Carter Brown, director emeritus of the National Gallery of Art and chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts

This lecture is presented in connection with the exhibition Windshield: Richard Neutra’s House for the John Nicholas Brown Family and is cosponsored by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Graduate School of Design. J. Carter Brown will use slides and color footage shot by his father to illustrate the design, development, and twists of fate affecting his parents’ revolutionary 1930s house. The exhibition will be open for viewing in the Sackler preceding the lecture.

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