20th-century design was profoundly shaped and enhanced by the creativity of women—as muses of modernity and shapers of new ways of living, and as designers, patrons, performers, and educators. This installation, drawn entirely from MoMA’s collection, celebrates the diversity and vitality of individual artists’ approach to the modern world, from Loïe Fuller’s pulsating turn-of-the-century performances to April Greiman’s 1980s computer-generated graphics, at the vanguard of early digital design. Highlights include the first display of a newly conserved kitchen by Charlotte Perriand with Le Corbusier (1952) from the Unité d’Habitation housing project; furniture and designs by Lilly Reich, Eileen Gray, Eva Zeisel, Ray Eames, Lella Vignelli, and Denise Scott Brown; textiles by Anni Albers and Eszter Haraszty; ceramics by Lucy Rie; a display of 1960s psychedelic concert posters by graphic designer Bonnie Maclean; and a never-before-seen selection of posters and graphic material from the punk era. The gallery’s “graphics corner” first explores the changing role and visual imagery of the New Woman through a selection of posters created between 1890 and 1938; in April 2014 the focus of this section will shift to Women and War, an examination of the iconography and varied roles of women in times of conflict, in commemoration of the centennial of the outbreak of
Organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, and Luke Baker, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.
