America Goes Modern: The Rise of the Industrial Designer Video Event

About the Event:

During the 1920s and 1930s, the speed of modern life in the United States — accelerated by advances in transportation, communication, technology and advertising — changed not only how people lived their lives, but also the objects they chose to live with. A new profession emerged to help American manufacturers and consumers navigate the overwhelming transitions of the era: the industrial designer. Through the power of form, color, ornament, and materials, the earliest practitioners created a modern aesthetic that came to represent American hopes, dreams, and fantasies.

Based on her new book, curator and author Nonie Gadsden will present a close examination of selected masterworks for the era, each which offer a window into the social, cultural, technological, and economic world in which they were made and used. Included will be sleek furniture, vibrant ceramics, streamlined metalware, and innovative plastics from the leading designers of the era, among them: 

• Norman Bel Geddes
• Donald Deskey
• Belle Kogan
• Paul Frankl
• Russel Wright
  

Even though this event is online, it will include a live PowerPoint — with wonderful images that you will be able to see directly on your computer screen, tablet, or mobile device. 

About the Speaker:

Nonie Gadsden is the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). She earned her B.A. from Yale College and her M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. At the MFA, she is responsible for a wide range of artwork, including decorative arts and sculpture of the Western Hemisphere from ancient times through the 20th century. She played a key role in the planning and installation of the MFA’s award-winning Art of the Americas Wing, which features the arts of North, Central, and South America (opened 2010). Her recent work at the MFA includes serving as lead curator for “Women Take the Floor” (2019—2021); co-leading the creation of a museum-wide Folk Art Initiative; mounting the exhibition on the collecting of folk art, “Collecting Stories: The Invention of Folk Art” (2021); developing new 20th-century galleries, including “Art and Jazz” and “Folk Meets Modernism” (opened 2022); and publishing a book based on the MFA’s collection of American modern design, America Goes Modern: The Rise of the Industrial Designer (2022). Gadsden also heads the Collections Committee of the Nichols House Museum on Boston’s Beacon Hill, and serves as a Governor for the Decorative Arts Trust.

Registration:

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