Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty

Premiered at MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, October 2018 – March 2019.

Traveling to the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, May – September 2019; and Fondation d’Entreprise Martell, Cognac, France, April 2021 – January 2022.

With their exhibition project SAGMEISTER & WALSH: Beauty, Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh make a visually impressive multimedia plea for us to take delight in beauty. Spreading across the entire MAK, their exhibition investigates why people feel attracted to beauty, how they can deal with it, and which positive effects beauty can have.

With the help of numerous examples from product design, urban planning, architecture and graphic design as well as newly produced installations, they invited the audience to see, smell and touch. All as part of an endeavor to demonstrate that beautifully designed objects stimulate human perception and, ultimately, work better. Supported by insights from psychological aesthetics, history, philosophy and the natural sciences, Sagmeister & Walsh took the view that beauty is more than just a superficial strategy: it influences our everyday life, stimulates our perception and makes the world a better place.