Moving Images examines both classical exhibitions and various kinds of filmic presentations of architecture starting with the selection, the editing, and the post-production processes. We look at the ways architectural projects are manipulated for curatorial purposes with examples drawn from major exhibitions in various countries.

Philip Johnson bragged that two exhibitions he curated at the MoMA in New York launched major architectural movements: the international style in 1932 and deconstructivism in 1988. As a trained art historian, Johnson had carefully selected the material and rigorously organized it in order to suggest an ideology, a genealogy, and a teleology for a movement where others before him had only discerned unconnected projects.

The limited information that an exhibition provides lends the curators remarkable freedom and power to shape the perception of the visitors and virtually create, for example, national architectures. If successful, such manipulations can become self-realizing prophecies.