A Designed Life: Contemporary American Textiles, Wallpapers, and Containers & Packaging, 1951–1954
June 12–September 19, 2021
Supported by:
A Designed Life is curated by Margaret Re and organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, UMBC with support from the Coby Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Knoll, Inc.
The Design Museum of Chicago is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency; City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Truettner Foundation; Terra Foundation for American Art; MacArthur Funds for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and Illinois Humanities.
The Design Museum is thrilled to bring the traveling exhibition, A Designed Life: Contemporary American Textiles, Wallpapers, and Containers & Packaging, 1951–1954, from University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) to Chicago.
A Designed Life is an exhibition based on three historically significant traveling exhibitions of contemporary, mass-produced, American-designed consumer goods that were commissioned by the U.S. Department of State in the early 1950s. It recreates those early Cold War exhibitions — featuring American textiles, wallpapers, containers, and packaging — restating and interpreting part of each display as it might have appeared in the early 1950s.
By this time, the United States and Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War. Extensive propaganda campaigns were part of both countries’ strategy for extending their spheres of influence. As part of this strategy, the United States Department of State developed a series of elaborate traveling exhibits that created an attractive portrait of contemporary America. The three exhibits organized in 1951 by the Traveling Exhibition Service that are recreated in A Designed Life include:
• Contemporary American Textiles, designed by Florence Knoll;
• Contemporary American Wallpapers, designed by Tom Lee;
• Containers and Packaging, designed by Will Burtin.
These exhibitions were shown in West German schools, museums, trade fairs, and through the America House program, a system of US-sponsored information centers. Specifically, the exhibition linked consumer preferences to political preferences and aimed to convince Europeans of the superiority of the US over the Soviet Union. The public agencies and private citizens who created the exhibitions believed that utility and efficiency were critical components of improving postwar life, and were linked directly to democracy. The exhibitions were popular, and particularly geared towards the women who were critical in German post-war reconstruction. Due to a 1948 federal law, these exhibits were never shown in the United States, and were largely unknown to Americans, until now. Join us at A Designed Life, and explore these historic exhibitions through a contemporary lens.
The exhibition catalogue is published by CADVC, UMBC and distributed through Distributed Art Publishers at artbook.com.
A Designed Life is organized by UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, with support from The Johns Hopkins University Graduate Program in Museum Studies and Morgan State University’s School of Architecture + Planning. The presentation of A Designed Life is supported by The Coby Foundation, Ltd.; the National Endowment for the Arts; Knoll, Inc.; and UMBC. Additional support comes from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Baltimore County Commission on Arts and Sciences.
About the Curator
A professor of visual arts at UMBC, Margaret Re is a design educator, practitioner, and researcher. Re teaches theory and history, with an emphasis on typography and curriculum development. She is a practicing designer and consultant to academic, cultural, and non-profit institutions. Her work has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the American Association of Museums (AAM), and The Type Director’s Club (TDC). Her research interests include typography, design history, and women and design.
Re has received numerous awards and fellowships, including including two National Endowment for the Arts grants: a 2017 Art Works grant for catalogue and exhibition development for A Designed Life: Contemporary American Textiles, Wallpapers, and Containers & Packaging, 1951–1954 and a 2002 grant, in the category of history and preservation, for Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter, an exhibition that traveled nationally and internationally. A monograph of the same title was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2003. In 2005, ATypI invited her to speak in honor Carter’s typographic jubilee. Re holds a B.F.A. in Communication Design from Virginia Commonwealth University and an M.F.A. in Graphic Design from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
