”Countryside, The Future was an exhibition addressing urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic issues through the lens of architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).
A unique exhibition for the Guggenheim Museum, Countryside, The Future explored radical changes in the rural, remote, and wild territories collectively identified as “countryside,” or the 98% of the Earth’s surface not occupied by cities, with a full rotunda installation premised on original research. The project presented investigations by AMO, Koolhaas, with students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University, Netherlands; and the University of Nairobi. The exhibition examined the modern conception of leisure, large-scale planning by political forces, climate change, migration, human and nonhuman ecosystems, market-driven preservation, artificial and organic coexistence, and other forms of radical experimentation that are altering landscapes across the world.” [source]
It would be our last pre-Covid-19 exhibition, and the last outing in a crowed place. On that same day, March 7th 2020, the then NY Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency. One day later, on March 8th, NYC issued guidelines to avoid densely packed buses, subways, and trains.
Wojciech Fangor, M 37, 1969, Oil on canvas 
From left: Andy Warhol, David Whitney, Philip Johnson, Dr. John Dalton, and Robert A. M. Stern in the Glass House in 1964. Photograph by David McCabe
In 1949, American architect Philip Johnson built his Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. In some photographs, he staged himself as a hermit in the woods. But to Johnson, the countryside was not only a place of retreat and reflection – it was also the contrary: a place of feasts and banquets, of an ongoing discourse with artists and students and fellow gay friends, a salon, sometimes almost an academy, and a refuge.
March 7th, 2020
The Humble Fabulist 