A small town in Indiana, with the nearest airport 54 miles away. A limited access to public transportation and cab services. My first introduction to Columbus came a few months ago, through cinema, on a rainy day, with Haley Lu Richardson passionately speaking about its architecture. The film Columbus (2017) lingered on the city’s low-rise buildings, modernism and understated yet thoughtful public spaces, highlighting a surprising depth in a place so seemingly quiet and provincial. In the movie, actor John Cho’s character Jin remarks, “I hear this town is quite the Mecca (for modern art and architecture).” Well, what would you expect to find in such an unlikely Midwestern setting?

Even though my research had prepared me for the icons I might encounter, the experience during the opening weekend of 2025 Exhibit Columbus —an exhibition of the Landmark Columbus Foundation that activates the modern legacy of Columbus through art, architecture and design—far exceeded my expectations. I arrived looking for architecture and art but discovered something deeper: community. As the curatorial statement of this year’s programme puts it, “Exhibit Columbus brings the public into the evolving performance of the city.”

The theme of the fifth edition, Yes, And, invited contributors to engage with the layered legacy of Columbus by adding new dimensions to its buildings and spaces. In a town known as ‘The Athens of the Prairie’, that responsibility is considerable. With works by architects like Eliel Saarinen, Eero Saarinen, I. M. Pei, Robert Venturi, César Pelli and Richard Meier shaping its identity, Exhibit Columbus asked contemporary designers to create something in dialogue with the architectural history of the town. As daunting as that sounds, this year’s participants rose to the challenge.

Take designer and assistant professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Akima Brackeen’s Pool/Side, a shallow, bright purple pool placed at the entrance of Pei’s Bartholomew County Public Library. At first, what comes across seems unexpected, but practically and metaphorically, it works. Recalling a time when public swimming sites excluded many, the pool became a space of inclusion. Over the weekend, people of all ages, genders and backgrounds splashed, lingered and played in it—transforming the library’s plaza into a joyful gathering space.

Nearby, Inside Out by Chandler Ahrens, Constance Vale and Kelley Van Dyck Murphy of the St. Louis-based architecture practice AVV A, reimagines American architect and interior designer Alexander Girard’s iconic dollhouse for the Miller House. Their version extends that narrative in two directions. First, it acknowledges women architects in Columbus, such as Susan Torre and Deborah Berke, whose contributions are often overlooked. Second, it invites children into architectural imagination, creating a large-scale dollhouse that encourages play and tactile engagement.

Across, in the sunken courtyard of Saarinen’s First Christian Church, sits Lift by Studio Cooke John. A forest of cubes draped with colourful fabric, the installation questions: “How can we combine the power of architectural legacy with the playful and welcoming?” As the studio's founding principal Nina Cooke John reminds us, the building is not only an icon of American modernism but also a living church. Lift embodies both—respectful of the built history yet structurally and practically forward-looking.

A few steps away, New York-based art and architecture practice AD—WO’s Ellipsis shifts the frame further. Rather than conversing only with Columbus’ modernist landmarks, Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu of the studio foreground histories that have been too often omitted: indigenous space-making and Black inhabitation. Through reed canopies, charred columns, crushed granite and stone benches, the design installation created a contemplative site of memory—balancing what is remembered with what has been forgotten. From here, the tempo changes.

On the rooftop of a parking garage, Studio Barnes’ Joy Riding explodes with sound and spectacle. Rooted in Indiana’s automotive history, the installation examines how cars, music, ritual and assembly have long fuelled cultural joy. With speakers, rhythms and cars transformed into instruments of celebration, it reimagines idling as a communal ritual. On that rooftop, the music from the speakers felt less like idling and more like a backdrop for looking out as far across Columbus as possible. A quiet assertion that art is here, so is music and architecture. Yes, And, so are the stories of Columbus.

At the Ovation Plaza, you walk across a colourful urban installation that folds and unfolds to reveal shifting visuals. Cornell faculty and co-principals of Jefferson Lettieri Office (JE-LE), Michael Jefferson and Suzanne Lettieri’s Apart, Together, is a multi-experiential installation that frames a space for live public performances and future outdoor film screenings. Elsewhere, Charlie Vinz of Adaptive Operations takes on the 136-year-old Crump Theatre with Accessing Nostalgia. The firm, building on their expertise in adaptive reuse and cultural production, looks back into the history of the theatre through three ‘portals’, each building on a specific design element. From reviving a covered window on the theatre’s façade, to making use of a long-unused opera box, and opening an outer wall to create a gathering space, the installation felt almost like a time capsule.

While in the gathering space, you encountered the present, stepping inside transported you into the past. And stepping out—walking a bit, crossing the road and seeing the building from a distance—immediately offered a glimpse into the future.

Meanwhile, Andrew Fu, Aaron Goldstein and Aleksandr Mergold’s The Steel Horsie reminisces about Columbus’ railroad history with a massive installation built entirely from local scrap. Like Oz—a metaphor Mergold himself invoked—the work appeared almost magically from nothing and, at the exhibition’s end, recedes back into the landscape. As the team mentions in the walkthrough, the installation gives the visitors a chance to discover the historic context of Columbus before the mid-century, back to an earlier modernity.

PUBLIC/SCHOOL/GROUNDS, created by César Lopez, Jess Myers, Amelyn Ng and Germán Pallares-Avitia, breaks open the traditional classroom. Drawing inspiration from the roofscapes of public schools in Columbus, this team of professors from the University of Virginia School of Architecture, Syracuse University, Columbia University and the Rhode Island School of Design crafted a space for multisensory learning. They used colourful, hard, soft and furry platforms to create a spontaneous learning environment that adapts to children’s needs, rather than forcing them to adapt to the setting.

Finally, the assistant professor of Architecture at the University of New Mexico, Sarah Aziz’s sky-high banner, A View of the World from Indiana, declares: ‘Nothing To See Here’. The irony is deliberate. As Aziz shared about the piece, telling someone not to look only makes them look harder. Suspended above a town with more stories than one might expect, the banner underscores the overlooked centrality of the Midwest in shaping American architectural discourse. Even amid these layered conversations, Exhibit Columbus found itself in controversy. Shortly after Aziz unveiled a series of twelve ‘bathtub Madonnas’—shrine-like alcoves, each holding a carved wooden figure of an architect linked to the Midwest—debates arose over their representation, particularly on the semi-nude depictions of some figures. In the end, the organisation asked Aziz to remove the installation. An incident questioning curatorial choices, cultural sensitivity and the limits of provocation.

I recently read that every structure carries within it something of the culture that built it. We tend to apply that idea to cities or buildings, but more and more it seems relevant to the curated landscapes of our time—biennials, design weeks and public installations that appear with increasing frequency across the globe. What do these spectacles tell us about the culture of the places that host them?

Exhibit Columbus brought that question into focus. Each designer arrived with a different background and ethos, yet collaborated with a local site partner—be it a church, a library or a private plot—to weave new narratives into the town. Some drew inspiration from Columbus itself, others brought their own frameworks and let them meet the town on their own terms. While critics, researchers and practitioners debated what these works mean for design, memory and cultural history, another audience encountered them with less burden. Children leapt into the Pool/Side, young people swayed on the swing at the Lift, neighbours lingered at The Crump and people enjoyed music at Joy Riding. For them, the installations were not arguments or provocations, but part of daily life—something new, something shared.

And perhaps that is the most enduring question: in our determination to curate and define culture, are we forgetting that culture is, maybe, the most authentic, not when it is framed, but when it is lived?