Museum Shows/ September & October

Digital Crystal: Swarovski at the Design Museum
Design Museum London
September 5^th 2012 – January 13^th 2013
London, England

Design Miami/ sponsor Swarovski collaborated with the Design Museum London to debut Digital Crystal during the London Design Festival this past September. Designers were challenged with exploring the future of memory in the current digital age. Previous Swarovski commissions are shown alongside a new generation of designers as they discover the changing relationship that humans have with their surroundings, giving a new perspective on the future of memory. The exhibition includes explorations by Yves Behar, Ron Arad, Paul Cocksedge and Design Miami/ Basel 2012 W Hotels Designer of the Future Award Winner Philippe Malouin.

Designmuseum.org

Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate
Milwaukee Art Museum
September 6^th 2012 – January 1^st 2013
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

For the first time in the United States, an exhibition debuted on German ceramicist Grete Marks at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It tells the tragic tale of Marks’ ceramic work at her factory in the 1920s and early 1930s that is easily considered ahead of its time. The work shows her delicate attention to her Bauhaus teaching and German tradition. Unfortunately, the German Nazi government purchased Marks’ factory for far below its true value in the mid 1930s, and her work was later labeled as degenerate. Her later work in England arguably lacked her earlier artistic vision, and many consider the promise of Marks was lost, among much else, in World War II.

mam.org

Erwin Wurm – Home
Vitra Design Museum
September 14^th, 2012 – January 20^th 2013
Weil am Rhein, Germany

After last year’s Erwin Wurm exhibition at the Bass Museum, Vitra Design Museum debuted an exhibition on the continuing impact of Pop Art and popular culture by the designer’s work. Visitors can see familiar works by Wurm alongside new pieces created specifically for the exhibition. The work alludes to everyday culture as well as the architecture of Frank Gehry and Herzog & de Meuron. It makes a perfect statement on the relationship of Pop Art and design.

Design-museum.de

Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective
LACMA
September 16^th 2012 – January 6^th 2013
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective debuted in mid-September at the LACMA with an exhibition designed by close friend Frank Gehry. Price is known for redefining contemporary sculpture and practice. He has enjoyed a cult following since the 1960s and the exhibition follows his development of sculptural practices. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by exhibition curator Stephanie Barron as well as art historians and critics.

Lacma.org

Dance Works III: Merce Cunningham / Rei Kawakubo
October 4^th 2012 – March 24^th 2013
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

The Walker Art Center celebrates the costumes created by Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo for Merce Cunningham’s 1997 dance Scenario in its latest exhibition. It explores the collaboration between Japanese fashion designer Kawakubo and legendary choreographer Cunningham. The show is the third exhibition in a series showcasing the Walker’s Merce Cunningham Dance Company Collection – the largest acquisition of visual art in the museum’s history.

walkerart.org

Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851–1939
Carnegie Museum of Art
October 13^th 2012 – February 24^th 2013
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Opening in mid-October, the exhibition explores the decorative arts from the late 1800s into the 1930s, ranging from London’s Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 to the New York World’s fair in 1939. The fair format was the most important vehicle for debuting new designs that celebrated modern living. It democratized design like never before, and at the Carnegie Museum of Art more than 200 examples of the most important work of furniture, metalwork, glass, ceramics, tiles and jewelry are presented.

Cmoa.org

Pop Art Design
Vitra Design Museum
October 10^th 2012 – February 3^rd 2013
Weil am Rhein, Germany

A central characteristic of Pop Art was the dialogue between art and design, which is explored by Vitra Design Museum’s latest exhibition. Works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Judy Chicago are paired with design objects by Charles Eames, George Nelson and Ettore Sottsass to explore this everlasting dialogue. The exhibition extends its exploration through album covers, magazines, films and photos of contemporary interiors. It finally vindicates the role played by design in Pop Art, and is accompanied by an Erwin Wurm exhibition running alongside in the museum.

design-museum.de

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec: Bivouac
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
October 20^th 2012 – January 20^th 2013
Chicago, Illinois, USA

Opening October 20^th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bivouac is a traveling exhibition celebrating innovative designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec that made its debut at the Centre Pompidou-Metz last year. The MCA galleries are enlivened and divided by the Bouroullec microarchitecture, including the award-winning Algues, plastic branches that snap together to form a screen, and Clouds, pressed felt slotted together to form colorful walls and enclosures. Bivouac is a mid-career exhibition for the Bouroullec brothers that continue to bring high-tech manufacturing to everyday furniture objects.

mcachicago.org

-Brandon Grom

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