A Century of Design, Part III: 1950–1975

This is the third in a four-part series of exhibitions surveying design in the twentieth century through the presentation of significant objects in all media drawn from the Museum's collection. The more than fifty works on view display the wide range of idioms and the artistic exploration of new materials, technologies, and aesthetics that characterized design from the postwar years to the postmodern era. The exhibition follows the continuation of organic modernism in America and Scandinavia, the rise of the studio craft movement, the resurgence of Italian modernist design, and the influence of Op Art and other avant-garde movements on design and decoration. Included are works by such leading designers as Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Verner Panton, Hans Wegner, Wharton Esherick, Joe Colombo, Piero Fornasetti, Gio Ponti, Lella and Massimo Vignelli, and Richard Sapper.