As an architect, designer, and educator, Ralph Rapson has been at the forefront of the modern movement sine the late 1930s. Today, he is widely regarded as the most influential 20th-century architect in Minnesota.

This retrospective exhibition-organized by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum-acknowledges the importance of RapsonÕs work and his leading role in disseminating modernist ideas. His domestic architecture and designs are on display at the Institute and his public projects at the Weisman.

Born in 1914 in Michigan, Rapson received his early architectural training there in the 1930s. From 1938 to 1940 while at the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, he came into close contact with the schoolÕs director Eliel Saarinen, a Finnish architect and early proponent of modern design. When Rapson began his own career, Americans preferred historical styles. But rather than looking to the past, modern architects favored the sleek, stripped-down forms and industrial materials of the machine age, like steel and glass.

RapsonÕs life has been filled with exceptional opportunities and extraordinary relationships. In 1942, he oversaw architectural instruction at ChicagoÕs New Bauhaus, which was directed by the famous Hungarian designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. In 1946, he joined the faculty at BostonÕs Massachusetts Institute of Technology at a time when its architectural program intensified its modernist focus. From 1951 to 1953, he designed several embassies for the U.S. government in Western Europe. Then, in 1954, he became head of the University of MinnesotaÕs School of Architecture, a position he hled for the next thirty years. His best-known projects locally include the Pillsbury House (1963), the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre (1963), and the housing complex Cedar-Riverside New Town-In Town (1962-73).

This collaborative exhibition is presented in part by a grant from the University of Minnesota's Design Initiative and by Gabberts Furniture and Design Studio, the InstituteÕs Architecture and Design partner. Additional generous gifts have been provided by Carol and Kim Anderson, Judy and Kenneth Dayton, the Marbrook Foundation, William G. and Mary Shepherd, and the Colleagues of the Weisman Art Museum.