EXHIBITION
$8
Demystifying our material world
Put 250-odd items from the past quarter century of American design in a room and what do you get? A funky garage sale or the Denver Art Museum exhibition US Design: 1975-2000. The collection demystifies the daunting world of design and presents historically significant results of American creativity during a period that brought us some of our most undeniably poetic and highly usable products - and put the United States on the map as an aesthetics power center.
The show, which took five years to pull together, features Comfort Products' fabric-and-plastic Flexon T Ski Boot (1979) and Donald Booty Jr.'s clunky Double Plus Calculator, with its large red, yellow, and blue buttons (1986). Also on display are Karim Rashid's handled Garbo trash can (1996); Apple's iBook (1999); and Microsoft's ergonomically friendly TrackBall Explorer Mouse (dating way back to, um, 2000).
The exhibition's organizer, R. Craig Miller, recruited several industry heavies to select items for inclusion and contribute essays to the accompanying catalog ($65 from Prestel) to help viewers understand why contemporary American design deserves its own show. Journalist Thomas Hines speaks to current examples of design's significance in culture (remember the butterfly ballots in the 2000 presidential election?); scholar Rosemarie Haag Bletter presents a brainy synopsis of recent architectural theory; University of Pennsylvania professor David G. De Long offers a greatest hits of American architecture; Virginia Commonwealth University professor Philip B. Meggs lays out a similar approach to the graphic arts. Miller himself chimes in with a surprisingly less-than-hyperbolic look at recent American design, including problematic elements of its history. What this all-star cast of commentators provides is an analytic framework, an unusually multifaceted context.
While the catalog's introduction clarifies that the exhibit "in no way pretends to be a survey of everything that has happened in American design since the 1970s," it is brave, fascinating, and extremely practical. US Design reminds us that our current world and culture are being defined for posterity through the forms and materials designers choose. And these choices help us make better sense of our lives, activities, and interactions. As Thomas Hines writes, "We're all part of the show."
February 23 through May 26 at the Denver Art Museum: www.denverartmuseum.org; Prestel: (888) 463 6110.
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US Design: 1975-2000
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