Many artists are preoccupied with representing the risks arising from rapid economic and technological “progress.” The Guggenheim Museum is exhibiting and optimistic take on this theme by Hungarian-born László Maholy-Nagy, sculptor, photographer, painter, filmmaker, and designer.

Maholy-Nagy, who lived 1895 to 1946, was eye witness to the first World War. Out of this harrowing experience he opts for hope - that in the future, science, and the fast-paced roll-out of new technology, together with rational thinking, can do a better job at improving people's lives. The Guggenheim’s cream, shell-like interior, as it spirals upwards to the light, is the perfect way to see the work of this optimistic artist unfolding as he experiments with abstraction via new photographic techniques, new film stocks, new materials (such as plexiglass), and new production processes.