Migrating Modernism, Migrating Ideas

Migrating Modernism, Migrating Ideas: Transnational Exchanges in Architecture and Art is a symposium bringing together scholars and practitioners to explore how the movement of people, objects, and expertise reshapes art, the built environment, and their cultural meanings.

Across three days in Sydney (26–28 August), the symposium traces modern and contemporary exchanges across artistic and architectural cultures, professional networks, and the making of private and public commissions, asking what “migration” produces in terms of identity, authorship, and agency.

Keynotes by Prof. Barry Bergdoll (Columbia University) and Dr Lynne Cooke explore, respectively, Marcel Breuer’s work and collaborative networks, and the relation of textiles and architecture.

Conceived in dialogue with the exhibition Migrating Modernism: The Architecture of Harry Seidler, the art-focused day examines modernist utopias and broader transatlantic exchanges among artists, patrons, and institutions. The architecture day extends this inquiry to the built environment, exploring how transnational movements shape architectural identity, complicate authorship, and redistribute agency across the professional networks that carry architecture from design conception to material realisation.

Please note, registration for events is essential.

Header image: Installation views from “Migrating Modernism. The architecture of Harry Seidler”, with artworks by Theo Van Doesburg, Josef Albers and "Portrait of Harry & Penelope Seidler" by Petrina Hicks, SMAC San Marco Art Centre, Venice, 2025. Photo: Enrico Fiorese.