Red or White?

“Red or white?” a sommelier stationed outside the Cooper Union’s Houghton Gallery asked. “Is this a political purity test,” my wisenheimer friend replied, prompting a chuckle from our wine steward. The opening of the exhibition Vkhutemas: Laboratory of Modernism 1920–1930, postponed for several months on account of institutional politics, had drawn avant-garde aficionados such as ourselves to Cooper that Tuesday evening. Many more were excited to gather among familiar faces, while others appeared curious as to how the event would shake out.

In the days leading up to the show’s would-be opening in late January, a certain sensitivity had built up about how best to display works related to a radical school of art and architecture in Soviet Moscow in light of Russia’s barbarous war in Ukraine. (How to disentangle the one from the other, the “red” from the “white”?) Curators Anna Bokov and Steven Hillyer developed additional introductory texts that clarified their intent, while supplementary reflections from Cooper Union president and other academics were added to assuag…