Though Aline Bernstein Louchheim Saarinen (1914–72) was an acclaimed journalist in her day, she slipped into obscurity—only to begin to emerge as her husband Eero Saarinen’s architectural star began rising again in recent years. Yet, well before her marriage to Saarinen in 1954, she was a cultural force, writing hundreds of articles for magazines and as an art critic for The New York Times, where she was a vigorous defender of modern architecture, at a time when much of America was dubious about contemporary design.
Born into a privileged New York family, Aline was taken on her first grand tour of Europe at the age of 9. But her deep education in Modernism really began at Vassar College, where John McAndrew was her influential teacher. McAndrew had studied architecture at Harvard and was part of a circle that included Henry Russell Hitchcock and Lincoln Kirstein, who became players in the nascent Museum of Modern Art. In 1929, McAndrew traveled in Europe with another member of that tribe, Philip Johnson, visiting J.J.P. Oud housing and Brinkman & Van der Vlugt’s Van Nelle Factory. At the Bauhaus in Dessau, they met Gropius, though he was no longer running the school.
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