Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Library shelf
Andrea Branzi Italian
Manufacturer Memphis Milano Italian
Not on view
Branzi’s bookcase conjures the most archetypal of architectural forms, the ancient ziggurat. Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, who spoke a unified language until they challenged God with their heaven-aspiring creation, Branzi constructed a tower using the unified language of modernism—with the classically modern materials of glass and steel in a rational suspension structure that transparently expresses the final form. The postmodern coup de grace is the finial flourish, the plastic Babylonian palm fronds. This work relates to both the Carlton room divider, which features the same unconventional triangular form and sculptural stance, and the Capodanno lamp, which shares its theatrical exposition of materials and structural form.
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