[tt] NYT: Magda Cordell McHale, 86, Futurist Thinker, Is Dead

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Magda Cordell McHale, 86, Futurist Thinker, Is Dead
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/arts/design/17mchale.html

By KEN JOHNSON

Magda Cordell McHale, an artist who was one of the founding members
of the Independent Group in London in the early 1950s and later
became a renowned sociologist and writer in the field of futurism,
died on Feb. 21 in Buffalo. She was 86.

Her death, at the home of her friend and caretaker Denise Kelleher,
was confirmed by Ms. Kelleher.

Along with her first husband, Frank Cordell, later a prominent
British musician and composer, and the artist John McHale, who
would become her second husband, Ms. McHale helped convene the
London-based group that started British Pop Art. Other members of
the Independent Group included the artists Richard Hamilton and
Eduardo Paolozzi; the architects Alison and Peter Smithson; and the
critic Lawrence Alloway, who is often credited with inventing the
term "Pop Art."

In 1956, Ms. McHale participated with the group in producing "This
Is Tomorrow," a famously innovative exhibition at Whitechapel Art
Gallery in London, which mixed fine art and many different sorts of
commercial products.

A painter herself, Ms. McHale created expressionistic images of
women in a style similar to Jean Dubuffet's. In the mid-1950s she
exhibited her work at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London
and at the Hanover Gallery.

In 1961, having divorced and remarried, she moved with Mr. McHale
to the United States, where together they embarked on careers in
futurism, an interdisciplinary field that studies global prospects
for human development. During the 1960s they lived in Carbondale,
Ill., where Mr. McHale worked with the futurist thinker Buckminster
Fuller at the University of Illinois.

In 1968, the couple moved to Binghamton, N.Y., where they created a
Center for Integrative Studies at the State University of New York
(now Binghamton University). Over the next decade, the couple
became internationally known for their studies of long-range
thinking about social, cultural and ecological change. Alvin
Toffler, author of "Future Shock," was one of their better-known
collaborators.

In 1977, the couple moved again, to the University of Houston, to
create a new version of their Center for Integrative Studies, but
Mr. McHale died the next year. In 1980, Ms. McHale moved to
Buffalo, where she recreated the Center for Integrative Studies at
the University at Buffalo. After her retirement, in 1999, she was
named professor emerita in the department of urban and regional
planning in the School of Architecture and Planning at the
University at Buffalo.

Despite her record of academic achievement and the publication of
numerous books and articles on futurist topics jointly with her
husband and in her own name, Ms. McHale had no advanced formal
education.

Born Magda Lustigova in Hungary on June 24, 1921, Ms. McHale went
to Palestine as a refugee during World War II and found work as a
translator for British intelligence. There she met Mr. Cordell, who
was also working for British intelligence.

Ms. McHale is survived by her three stepchildren, all sons of Mr.
McHale: John, who lives in Ottowa; Julian, of London; and Evan, of
Albuquerque.