Detour December 4, 2009

What can rest stops, information centers, and observation decks tell visitors about a culture? The School of Constructed Environments at Parsons The New School for Design will explore this question when it presents Detour, a traveling exhibition documenting notable architecture and design along 18 Norwegian National Tourist Routes. The exhibition, which is sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General and presented in collaboration with the Architectural League of New York and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, will be on view December 4 through January 19 at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons. Detour features photography and architectural models of key works from Norway’s National Tourist Routes Project initiated by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, which encourages designers across the world to propose alternatives to the traditional tourist-route architecture, which tends to value function over aesthetic beauty. In timing with the opening, there will be a panel discussion featuring participating architects on December 4 at 6 pm at The New School’s Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, followed by an opening reception in the galleries, which is free and open to the public. On Tuesday, January 19, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will host Detour: Art, Architecture, Cities and Landscapes, a symposium featuring an afternoon panel at 4:30 pm with architects and artists from Europe and the United States moderated by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design as well as two keynote lectures in the evening. Book signing and reception follows. For more information on the exhibition and related programming, please visit www.newschool.edu/johnsondesigncenter.