"The story of Alfred Barr and Philip Johnson, two young men, now acknowledged as giants in the history of modernism, who changed the course of design in the United States. In the 1920s and 1930s a new aesthetic emerged in the United States, based on the principles of the Bauhaus in Germany: rational, functional design devoid of ornament and without reference to historical styles. Alfred H. Barr Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, and Philip Johnson, director of its architecture department, were the leading proponents of the modern approach. Using as their laboratories both MoMA and their own apartments in New York, Barr and Johnson experimented with new ideas in museum ideology, extending the scope beyond painting and sculpture to include design and film; with exhibitions of ordinary objects elevated to art by their elegant design; and with installations in dramatically lit galleries with smooth, white walls"--