{{short description|American architect}} {{Infobox person | name = Elizabeth Bauer Mock | occupation = Professor, curator, author, journalist | image = Ebkassler.png | birth_name = Elizabeth Bauer | other_names = Elizabeth B. Kassler, Elizabeth Mock | birth_place = Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S. | birth_date = {{birth-date|1911}} | death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1998|2|8|1911}} | death_place = | alma_mater = Vassar College | notable_works = ''The Architecture of Bridges'', ''Modern Gardens and the Landscape'', "What is Modern Architecture?" |spouse=Rudolf Mock |children=Fritz Mock|parents=Alberta Krouse Bauer, Jacob Bauer|relatives=Catherine Bauer Wurster, Louis Bauer}}
'''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.<ref name="TownTopics"/><ref name="Treib">{{cite book |editor-last=Treib |editor-first=Marc |title=An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster |location=Los Angeles, CA |publisher=University of California Press |year=1995 |page=54 }}</ref><ref name="Geiger">{{cite web |url=http://jgonwright.net/MSSMisc1.html |title=In the Cause of Architecture: Commentaries in Memoriam |last=Geiger |first=J.W. |publisher=John W. Geiger Collection for the Study of Organic Architecture |date=2010 |access-date=2015-03-07 }}</ref> She was a charter apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, and the first former Taliesin fellow to join the MoMA staff.<ref name="Reed">{{cite book|title=The Show To End All Shows: Frank Lloyd Wright And The Museum Of Modern Art, 1940|publisher=Museum of Modern Art|year=2004|editor-last=Reed|editor-first=P.|location=New York, NY|page=62|editor2-last=Kaizen|editor2-first=W.|editor3-last=Smith|editor3-first=K.}}</ref><ref name=" Geiger2"/> She was an influential advocate for modern architecture in the United States.<ref name="Reed"/>
Elizabeth 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.<ref name="TownTopics">{{cite news |url=http://www.mocavo.com/Town-Topics-Princeton-Feb-18-1998-Volume-Li/465513/44 |title=Obituaries |work=Town Topics |location=Princeton, NJ |date=1998-02-18 |access-date=2015-03-09 }}</ref><ref name="Treib"/> In 1932 she graduated from Vassar College, where she majored in English.<ref name="TownTopics"/>
After college she became one of the first fellows at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin studio near Spring Green, Wisconsin.<ref name="Treib"/> 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.<ref name=" Reed"/><ref name="steinerag">{{cite web|url=http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Artifact%20Pages/PCSprgGreen.htm#0361.05|title=The Wright Library|access-date=2015-03-08}}</ref> After their marriage, they briefly lived in Switzerland.<ref name="Treib"/>
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.<ref name="MoMA">{{cite web |url=http://www.moma.org/explore/publications/modern_women/history#lexicon24 |title=Modern Women: A Partial History |publisher=MoMA |access-date=2015-03-07 }}</ref> A year later she co-circulated her first exhibition, “What is Modern Architecture?”.<ref name="Treib"/> She became McAndrew's full-time assistant in 1940. When McAndrew was dismissed in 1942, Mock became the director.<ref name="TownTopics"/><ref name="Treib"/> 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”.<ref name="Treib"/> She curated seven MoMA exhibitions in total between 1938 and 1946.<ref name="Huneault">{{cite book |editor-last=Huneault |editor-first=K. |editor-last2=Anderson |editor-first2=J. |title=Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850–1970 |publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press |year=2012 |page=209 }}</ref>
In 1946 and 1947, she and Rudolph lived in Knoxville, TN designing pre-fab housing for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Some of the buildings were in Fontana Village.
In 1948, she separated from Rudolph and moved to Taliesin West with her son Fritz for one season.<ref name="TownTopics"/> In 1949 she became an assistant professor of architectural history and librarian at the University of Oklahoma.<ref name="TownTopics"/><ref name="MiamiDaily">{{cite news |title=New Faculty Name is Added for OU |work=Miami Daily News-Record |date=1949-02-20 |page=10 }}</ref> After her divorce, she married Kenneth Stone Kassler in 1951 and moved to Princeton, New Jersey.<ref name="TownTopics"/><ref name=" Geiger"/> In Princeton she continued to write for architecture journals, the MoMA, and popular magazines.<ref name="TownTopics"/> Kassler died in 1964, the same year Bauer became a research associate at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Princeton University where she served until 1971.<ref name="TownTopics"/>
<!-- Deleted image removed: thumb|150px|right|Kassler's 1981 directory of Taliesin Fellowship members --> According to Concordia University's Research Chair in Art History, Kristina Huneault, Mock's books "strove to persuade a new generation of homebuyers of how modernism might improve their lives and the quality of North American architectural culture overall.”<ref name=" Huneault"/> They include ''If You Want to Build a House'' (1946), ''The Architecture of Bridges'' (1949), and ''Modern Gardens and the Landscape'' (1964, known then as Elizabeth B. Kassler).
Her book on bridges is described by Encyclopædia Britannica as "the first major book on bridges to give a modern viewpoint."<ref name="Britannica">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Billington |first=D.P. |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |title=Bridge |url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/79272/bridge/72077/Additional-Reading |year=2015 |access-date=2015-03-08 }}</ref> ''Modern Gardens and the Landscape'' is considered the authoritative survey of its subject.<ref name="MoMA" /> It was billed by the MoMA as "the first book to discuss the relationship between the modern garden and the natural landscape in terms of contemporary aesthetics."<ref name="MoMA-pressrelease">{{cite press release |url=https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/3356/releases/MOMA_1964_0143_1964-12-11_95.pdf?2010 |format=PDF |title=Modern Gardens and the Landscape by Elizabeth B. Kassler |publisher=MoMA |date=1964-12-11 |access-date=2015-03-08 }}</ref> ''Modern Gardens and the Landscape'' included the works of Burle Marx, Bernard Rudofsky, Gunnar Asplund and Luis Barragan.<ref name="Deckker">{{cite book |last=Deckker |first1=Z.Q. |title=Brazil Built: The Architecture of the Modern Movement in Brazil |location=London, England |publisher=Spion Press |date=2001 |page=169 }}</ref> Her books were all published by the Museum of Modern Art.<ref>{{cite book |last=Treib |first1=M. |title=An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster |location=Los Angeles, CA |publisher=University of California Press |year=1995 |page=81 }}</ref>
A 1979 visit to Taliesin West inspired her to put together a retrospective directory of the Taliesin Fellowship in time for its 50th anniversary (in 1982). She collected all the listings herself, and in 1981 published 450 copies of ''The Directory, 1932–1982, The Taliesin Fellowship, A Directory of Members''. This was the first such directory in Taliesin history and it inspired the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to develop similar directories.<ref name="Geiger2">{{cite web |url=http://jgonwright.net/ep01Fellows.html |title=My First Summer at the Fellowship |last=Geiger |first=J.W. |publisher=John W. Geiger Collection for the Study of Organic Architecture |date=2010 |access-date=2015-03-09 }}</ref>
In 1990 she retired to a retirement community in Lexington, Massachusetts.<ref name="TownTopics"/>
== Exhibitions curated at Museum of Modern Art ==
* ''Planning the Modern House'', Aug 25–Sep 21, 1942 * ''Modern Architecture for the Modern School'', Sep 16–30, 1942, with Rudolf Mock<ref>{{Cite web |last=MoMA |title=Modern Architecture for the Modern School |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2302}}</ref> * ''Look at Your Neighborhood,'' Mar 29–Jun 25, 1944, with Rudolf Mock and Clarence Stein<ref>{{Cite web |last=MOMA |title=Look at Your Neighborhood |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3151}}</ref> * ''America Builds,'' 1944, with G. Holmes Perkins * ''Built in U.S.A.,'' 1944 ** Exhibition catalog ''Built in USA: 1932-1944'' Edited by Elizabeth Mock, 1944<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mock |first=Elizabeth |title=Built in USA : 1932-1944 |publisher=The Museum of Modern Art |year=1944}}</ref> * ''Building with Wood'', Nov 15, 1944–Feb 18, 1945<ref>{{Cite web |last=MOMA |title=Building with Wood |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2333}}</ref> * ''Integrated Building: Kitchens, Bathrooms, Storage'', with Suzanne Wasson Tucker and Greta Daniel, Feb 21–May 13, 1945<ref>{{Cite web |last=MOMA |title=Integrated Building: Kitchen, Bathroom, and Storage |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3165}}</ref> * ''A New Country House by Frank Lloyd Wright'', Jun 18–Sep 3, 1946<ref>{{Cite web |last=MOMA |title=A New Country House by Frank Lloyd Wright: Scale Model |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2375}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org/elizabeth-bauer-mock-kassler/ Pioneering Women of American Architecture, Elizabeth Bauer Mock Kassler]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mock, Elizabeth Bauer}} Category:American landscape architects Category:American women landscape architects Category:People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) Category:20th-century American architects Category:Modernist architects from the United States Category:American architecture writers Category:Architecture educators Category:University of Oklahoma faculty Category:1911 births Category:1998 deaths Category:People from Lexington, Massachusetts Category:Writers from Massachusetts Category:Vassar College alumni Category:20th-century American writers Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American women