‘Modern Couples – Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde’ was a major exhibition organised by Centre Pompidou-Metz in collaboration with the Barbican Centre. It explored creative relationships across painting, sculpture, photography, design and literature, showcasing work by more than 40 creative couples between 1850 and 1950.

Casper Mueller Kneer transformed the Barbican Art Gallery into a complex suite of spaces referencing both classical and modern elements. This allowed individual treatments of the viewing spaces and their atmospheres, creating connections between works across the galleries or marking unique moments in the show, such as the ‘Exhibitions within the Exhibition’. Display case designs encompassed minute cases for Duchamp’s intimate casts to the central vitrine in ‘Chance Encounters’, a monumental steel-and-glass case that contained around 200 works in a single vitrine.

Casper Mueller Kneer worked closely with the curators to develop display strategies for grouping and framing the vast number of objects, as well as mocking-up and testing selected content, facilitating a dialogue between curatorial and design decisions. Over 40 different display cases were developed and constructed for the show: simple and complex plinths, steel and timber vitrines and tables, wall-based and whole room displays. The display cases were categorised into types and varied in material and size to support individual works on display.