- how do we justify design in a museum setting?
design in american collections:
- why/when did museums start collecting design?
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| peter cooper established educational institution open to all granddaughter eleanor (hewitt) opened cooper hewitt after cooper died |
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| cooper hewitt, NY america's first design museum goal for hewitts: improvement of public taste |
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| engraved acknowledgement of donation to cooper hewitt |
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| museum opened til late so that workers would have the time to go after work w hopes that it would lift public taste in all |
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| cooper hewitt, national design museum, NYC "the man-made environment in its totality" |
- notion that museum could act as a source of taste
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| john cotton dana of newark museum belief that museums should not be inaccessible & elite gazing museums museums as reforming, teaching, uplifting presences for society response to industrialization & consumer culture |
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| newark museum, newark NJ |
- dana mounted america's first ever display of industrial design
-championed improvement of industrial goods, well created & beautiful even though made by machines
-prints, books, photos, ceramics, etc.
-sent to 6 other cities to be seen
-pioneering effort: established dana's reputation
-offered to hand over to metropolitan museum & they turned it down, saying they didn't want to be associated w commercial "design"
-beauty could be found in every day goods; no strict relationship w age, rarity, or price
-in a changing world, shouldn't museums change as well?
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| 1929 exhibition: inexpensive items of good design |
- budget makes it hard for the newark to compete w the metropolitan's collecting power
- newark focuses more on the didactic aspect of design
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| metropolitan museum of art, NYC 1917 exhibition: the designer & the museum reversed refusal of industrial art; small exhibition gradually, cautiously integrating design & industrial arts into the rarefied world of the art museum exhibitions not curated by design curators |
- collecting vs. exhibiting: collecting = commitment
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| textile study room, metropolitan museum of art, NYC study rooms to go & study the examples of production promote good design & elevate taste & production through education |
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| philip johnson at the MoMA famous architect first director of architecture & design at MoMA design department opens under him |
- trustees of MoMA balked at the idea of showing industrial art but eventually started collecting
- design slowly creeping into museums due to progressive curators
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| 1934 exhibition: machine art, MoMA, NYC over 400 machine made objects mounted on pedestals & lighted from above like traditional art & sculptures philip johnson implies that industrial arts were just as worthy as traditional fine arts usefulness can make an object beautiful; function would create its own beauty MoMA acquired 100 objects from the exhibition |
objects of catalog of exhibition:
- shows other art acknowledging importance of machine/industry
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| american landscape- charles sheeler, 1930 |
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| bird in space- brancusi 1928 |
- MoMa's 1940s-50s series of exhibitions:
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| exhibition: useful objects MoMA, NYC fitness to form including more of the public into the notion of the beauty of production |
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| good design exhibition, MoMA, 1951 industrial aesthetic |
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| brooklyn museum american union of decorative artists & craftsmen exhibition, 1931 |
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| russel wright cocktail shaker, 1930 |
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| design for the machine exhibition, philadelphia museum of art 1932 products to be appreciated for beauty |
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| contemporary american industrial art exhibition, MoMA industrial designer's office, 1934 educating the public about the industrial designer & what they do |
- industrial design presented agents of reform, of tastes, education future
-during wartime, these designs became relevant as affordable objects
-reassuring evidence of creative problem solving during shakey war time
-masterpiece & the mass produced were awarded equal footing in museum context
-museums endorsed design's presence among the arts
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston:
- today, museums embrace design, are dynamic institutions
- "any object i acquire for my department [design] must stand up to the same criteria of works entering other departments" -curator of MFAH
