Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson, edited by David A. Hanks. Monacelli Press, October 2015, 232 pages, $50.

We may think we know all there is about the most famous display of architecture to be mounted in the the U.S., the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark show, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932. But there’s always more to dig up about this ultra-influential event and the fertile period from which it emanated, as we find in Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson. The book explores the close collaboration between MoMA’s first director, Barr, and the exhibit’s curator, Johnson, in bringing modernist architecture to America. While Hitchcock, a Harvard-trained art historian, was important to the theoretical underpinnings of the endeavor, he was off teaching at Wesleyan University, while Barr and Johnson dealt with the show’s gestation, production, and promotion in New York City.