mid century modern 60s living room ideas

welcome to crafting modernism: midcentury american art and design it's one of the biggest shows we've ever had, about two hundred objects 170 terrific artists, and it really talks about the intersection of art, craft, and design, and who gets to define those and how the boundaries really startedo blur after the second world war so it’s a bookend of the second world war and 1969 and the 25 year period that was very, very rich in fine art craft and design. this is one of the more challenging exhibits we've done in a long time to be very practical, what's the hardest thing was fitting this all into the room

and still leaving enough space for us to walk around. there is a great deal of 3d stuff here, 3 dimensional objects need to be displayed and a lot of times what we do here is more 2 dimensional frames that hang on the wall the very popular television series mad men really captures the period that this exhibition is really talking about we see that in don draper, we see that in the design of the offices in that show in his apartments, and the apartments and the homes of the other major characters

the eames chair and ottoman is probably the most iconic of mid-century american design it was designed by the husband and wife team of charles and ray eames and their credo was: "the best for the most for the least." so they really tried to come up for the best design for the most amount of people for the least amount of money the curators gave us some guidelines as to what things go together as a group to tell a story. so it's my job to try to fit that into our gallery space

we try to set it up with a table and a chair and things like that in the position you would see them as if they were in a living room this is actually one of my favorite pieces in the whole show and it's a casserole dish it's beautifully-designed, it's elegant, it would hold enough tuna casserole for four people that's the other interesting thing about this show, is that it really tries to push the question: "what is craft, and who gets to decide?" this piece by klaus odenberg is a really great example

of how blurry the lines got between craft, fine art, and design he's using what are normally considered craft techniques cutting, sewing, and working with fabric, but he's considered a high-end pop artist we try to give the show a flair and this is definitely a show with many, many pieces and they're all different colors and different looks we try to give this a 1950s-look to it so graphically there is a typeface that we use that is reminiscent of the 1950s i think there is a pendulum that constantly swings back and forth in the design world. every 30 to 40 years something that was old

becomes new again, and that particular design, whether it's an iconic chair or lamp or dinner service first came out it was fresh and new, it gets a little tired, it gets put away it gets re-discovered in somebody's attic, grandmother's house, second-hand store and there's really a resurgence of really good design that's new for a new generation

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