Elizabeth Bauer Mock
| Elizabeth Bauer Mock | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Elizabeth Bauer Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | February 8, 1998 |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Elizabeth B. Kassler |
| Alma mater | Vassar College |
| Occupation | Professor, curator, author, journalist |
| Notable work | The Architecture of Bridges, Modern Gardens and the Landscape, "What is Modern Architecture?" |
Elizabeth (Bauer) Mock (later Kassler) (1911 – February 8, 1998) was director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and a university professor. She was a charter apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, and the first former Taliesin fellow to join the MoMA staff. She was an influential advocate for modern architecture in the United States.
Elizabeth "Betty" Bauer Mock Kassler was born in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1911 as Elizabeth Bauer to Alberta Krouse Bauer, a homemaker, and Jacob Bauer, a New Jersey state highway engineer. Her older sister was Catherine Bauer Wurster, a prominent public housing advocate and urban planning educator, and her younger brother was Louis Bauer. She graduated from the Vail Deane School in 1928. In 1932 she graduated from Vassar College, where she majored in English.
After college she became one of the first fellows at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin studio near Spring Green, Wisconsin. It was at Taliesin where she met her first husband, Rudolph Mock, a draftsman from Basel, Switzerland who worked in Wright’s studio from January 1931 to April 1933. Rudolph was one of four Taliesin apprentices arrested for horsewhipping C. R. Secrest, who had broken Wright's nose over an employment dispute. After their marriage, they briefly lived in Switzerland.
Her involvement with the MoMA started in 1937 when she began working part-time for the museum’s Curator of Architecture and Industrial Design, John McAndrew. A year later she co-circulated her first exhibition, “What is Modern Architecture?”. She became McAndrew’s full-time assistant in 1940. When McAndrew was dismissed in 1942, Mock became the director. She remained at MoMA until 1946. During her time there, she produced many exhibits, including: “Built in the U.S.A.: 1932–1944” (1944), “Tomorrow’s Small House: Models and Plans” (1945), and “If You Want to Build a House”. She curated seven MoMA exhibitions in total between 1938 and 1946.
...
Wikipedia