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Channels: European Design
Learn about current IMA events with Melvin and Bren Simon Director and CEO Maxwell Anderson. This episode features a conversation with IMA' s R. Craig Miller, Curator of Design Arts & Director of Design Initiatives.
Hi I am Max Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of Indianapolis Museum of Art and today I am joined by R. Craig Miller our Curator of Design Arts
and Director of Design Initiatives at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Welcome Craig.
Thank you, good morning.
Thank you. Thanks for having us in your glorious exhibition, European Design Since 1985.
Give us a sense of what to except in the exhibition.
Well it’s a range of material, we begin with two late movements of the postmodernist tradition and then we show three major aspects of the modernist resurgence that happened in the mid 1980s
and continues right up to the present and then we conclude the show with three sort of counter reactions to it when the postmodernist began to revive themselves in the 1990s in a totally new direction.
So, what is unusual about the exhibition for museum goers?
I think its showing these two different approaches to design. Design in the United States is so much about industrial design. So, the whole idea of design as art is much more of European development.
So, I thought it would be very important for Americans to see this and experience it and see how rich that counter tradition is in contemporary design right now.
When you walk through the rest of an encyclopedic museum that has African and Asian and ancient art, how do you connect your discipline as an experienced museum goer with seeing objects from other cultures? Is there a connection for today’s museum goer?
Yes, because I think the artists themselves are always going back and looking at earlier cultures, or Japanese art or pre-Columbian South American art, so they themselves are looking at earlier things and feel that they are part of this longer tradition,
and it inspires their work. If you look the fact over in this is vitrine, it's a series of artists like Jurgen Bey and Hella Jongerius who were looking at delft porcelain from the 17th and 18th century.
So, they are not only reviving forms but they are reviving patterns and colors and in fact this room was painted with a sort of delft blue.
I want to encourage you to come back to our site and look at the wonderful video from the Design Symposium that was hosted here with interviews and conversations and lectures by some of the leading protagonists in the design world,
and also check back on our site frequently to see other examples of great design arts and the collection of the IMA. European Design Since 1985 runs through June 21st of 2009.
Nice chairs. They don't look even remotely comfortable but they are.
The colors are great and pop, the ever present shapes create a modern feel! Its very good.
Well done IMA!
I love the chairs, they are awesome :)
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