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Channels: European DesignTalks
The IMA's own R. Craig Miller, Curator of Design Arts at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, starts off the second day of sessions at the European Design Symposium, discussing how the leaders in the European design scene go about judging what is the best in contemporary design.
Good morning, I am Craig Miller the Curator of Design Arts at the IMA and welcome back to the second day of Shaping the New Century Symposium.
I want to ask all of you to take your seats and most importantly please turn off your cell phones [laughs]. We have a hard act to follow after the two sessions yesterday,
but we have four special people as our speakers this morning. Our topic in this third session is how do we go about judging what is the best in contemporary design?
What are the major conceptual stylistic movements, who were the most important leaders, what are their most significant designs,
and who are the rising stars in a vast field spanning a very large continent? Historically, this has primarily been a function of museums and curators, but the European design scene is more complex than the one in the States.
Governments play a much more active role in the Europe promoting their artists and manufacturers. There is also a much greater awareness of the central role that design plays in European culture.
So, there is a vast network of critics and media that chronicle the latest developments for design-conscious public. Our four speakers are uniquely qualified to help us examine this situation.
The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich are two of the European museums most actively involved in contemporary design. They regularly produce important exhibitions and publications
and they built some of the most important design collections in Europe. Cilla Robach has been the curator of contemporary design at the Nationalmuseum since 1998. She did her Ph.D on Swedish design in the 1960s and has written extensively on 20th and 21st century design.
In 2005, she curated an important exhibition on Swedish conceptual design. Modernism has of course been a primary movement in Sweden and Scandinavia since the decades between the world wars,
and it has in many respects continued unabaded right up to the present as a major force in Swedish design. Josef Strasser has been a curator for modern design at Die Neue Sammlung since 1991.
He studied art history at universities in Munich and Salzburg and received his Ph.D in 1990. If you have not been to Munich the collection at Die Neue Sammlung is simply mind boggling
and they have one of the most important holdings of postmodernist design in all of Europe. We have two equally articulate responders to these distinguished curators.
Juli Capella's CB is so extensive that once suspects that there must be two or three of him or else he simply works 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
He received his degree in architecture from the Barcelona Higher School of Architecture in 1991, but he has worked in almost every aspect of the design arts field from graphic design,
industrial design, interior design, architecture, to town planning. Mr. Capella has also worked as a journalist where he has written extensively for various Spanish and European magazines and newspapers.
He has also written numerous books on Spanish design and organized major international exhibitions on contemporary design. He was the president of FAD, the Spanish Design Association, from 2001 to 2005.
Cedric Morisset, who is based in Paris, is equally multifaceted. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Poitiers and graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Maine.
He has worked as a design critic for major French newspapers and magazines. He has also produced numerous books on contemporary design, the subjects ranging from the Compania Brothers to Louis Vuitton.
Mr. Morisset also works as a design consultant to a host of international design companies. So, we have with us today four of the best minds in Europe to discuss how we go about judging contemporary design from a variety of perspectives.
We will begin with Cilla Robach followed by Josef Strasser, Juli Capella, and Cedric Morisset. Thank you again from coming this morning! [applause]
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