Folder 21

1954–1973

Fireplaces and façades with the architect King-lui Wu

Albers created decorative designs for buildings by the Yale professor and architect King-lui Wu: geometric fireplaces for the Rouse (1954) and DuPont (1959) houses, the façade of the Manuscript Society, a Yale secret senior society (1962), and a design for Mt. Bethel Baptist Church (1973).

1969–1970

Gives his papers to the Smithsonian

Albers donated his papers, documents from 1929 to 1970, to the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.

8 December 1969 – 24 February 1970

“The Graphic Constructions” at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York showed the solo exhibition “The Graphic Constructions of Josef Albers”.

1970

Moves to Orange, Connecticut

In 1970 Albers and his wife Anni moved to Orange, Connecticut, where they continued to work in their private studio.

1971

Founds the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

Nearly five years before his death Albers founded a nonprofit foundation that he hoped would further “the revelation and evocation of vision through art”; today it administers the estates of both Josef and Anni Albers.

19 November 1971 – 11 January 1972

First living artist with a solo show at the Met

The exhibition of Albers's paintings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art made him the first living artist to be given a solo show there; it has also been called a retrospective.