Curated by Susan Brown and Matilda McQuaid

Color literally moved in Sonia Delaunay’s display of fabrics at the 1924 Salon d’Automne, thanks to a kinetic apparatus devised by her husband. The Cooper-Hewitt seems keen to minimize Robert Delaunay’s presence here, though; at issue, rather, is Sonia’s position at the forefront of modernist fashion, especially her contributions to Jazz Age glamour and her 1930s commissions for the high-end department store Metz & Co., where her name attracted business alongside those of other prominent designers such as Gerrit Rietveld. Striking a balance between the fine and applied arts in Delaunay’s oeuvre is tricky. “Color Moves”—brimming with more than 300 works in diverse media, from her 1913 illustrations for Blaise Cendrars’s poetry to 1960s silk scarves—will provide a stellar opportunity to scrutinize the fraught status of commercial practice within the avant-garde.

— Bibiana Obler