In the 1970s and 1980s, commercial galleries, museums, and private collectors began buying, selling, collecting, and exhibiting architectural drawings like never before. This mutually sustaining network elevated architectural drawings from utilitarian documents to objects of artistic merit. It was in this period that Martin E. Zimmerman ’59 began amassing a significant collection of architectural drawings. Martin and his wife Danielle donated a portion of their collection to the MIT Museum in 2017. The collection not only represents over one hundred years of American architectural graphics, but it also serves as a record of the art market for architectural drawings in the 1980s.

Zimmerman collected both historic and contemporary architectural drawings. Commercial venues such as Max Protetch Gallery in New York and Rhona Hoffmann Gallery in Chicago mounted exhibitions selling work from the archives of leading architects from the first two thirds of the twentieth century. Some of these architects represented in the Zimmerman collection include Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, and Erik Gunnar Asplund. The same galleries also hosted exhibitions and sales of the work of contemporary architects, and many of the more than thirty-five architects represented in the collection worked in the last third of the twentieth century. Among these postmodern and deconstructivist architects are Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, and Rem Koolhaas/Office for Metropolitan Architecture. In both older and contemporary work, the Zimmermans collected heavily from the rich architectural culture of their home city of Chicago, including work by Daniel Burnham, Stanley Tigerman, Laurene O. Booth (MIT 1960), and Helmut Jahn. Although most of the drawings in the collection were made by architects who worked in the United States, many examples are from international makers, such as Aldo Rossi, Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, and Zaha Hadid.

Drawings from the Zimmerman collection were featured in the 2024 exhibition “Drawing After Modernism” at the MIT Museum.

Title: Danielle and Martin E. Zimmerman Collection

Creators: Various

Dates: 1885–2004

Extent: 90 drawings, 15 photographs, 4 models, 3 prints, 1 painting

Language: English

Repository: MIT Museum

Reference code: 2018.011

Access: Online and by appointment

Copyright: See individual records

Credit: Danielle and Martin E. Zimmerman Collection, MIT Museum