Exhibit honors 40 years of modern architecture in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The modern architecture of the 1930's to 1970's in St. Louis wasn't simply about structures. It's tied to social movements and has also been linked to failures.

A new exhibit at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis explores those "Design Agendas".

Friday marked the grand opening of the new exhibit "Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s."

The exhibit examine the complex connections in St. Louis among modern architecture, urban renewal, and racial and spatial change in the interlocking histories of New Deal planning, the Great Migration, and the civil rights and Great Society eras.

"The show is in part an effort not to denigrate the great pieces of architecture here, but to also look at the social contexts of the whole thing," said Eric Mumford exhibition co-curator on Total Information A.M.

With nearly 300 architectural drawings, models, photographs, films, digital maps and artworks, "Design Agendas" is the first major exhibition to examine how interlocking civic, cultural and racial histories, as well as conflicting ideological aims, reshaped the city.

The exhibit runs until Jan. 6, 2025.