Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Museum for a Small City Project, Interior perspective, 1941-43, copyright 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), collection Museum of Modern Art

A very nice exhibition opened last month at MoMA — Cut n’ Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City. The highlights for me were definitely the numerous Mies van der Rohe photocollages, so powerfully serene, so visionary and so great to see in person. I LOVE photocollage. Embraced by the Dadaists and the Surrealists, and clearly the most celebrated of architects, among so many others, this medium dates much further back than the early twentieth century. In fact, it dates to at least the Victorian era. In early 2010, I happened upon a truly fantastic and fantastical show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage. Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, it featured previously unknown photocollages from fifteen different albums created by aristocratic women, amateur artists, in 1860s and 70s England. These works are universally superb and without question paved the way for one of the most important and influential artistic and aesthetic traditions.

Cut n’ Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City is on view at MoMA through December 1, 2013.

Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage by Elizabeth Siegel (The Art Institute of Chicago with Yale University Press, 2009)