Less than one percent of all businesses last long enough to celebrate their hundredth birthday—a distinction we’re proud to have achieved. Along the way, Herman Miller has focused on design and worked with some talented designers. As a result, we have some good design stories.
Did you know a focus group of seniors led Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick to design the Aeron chair? Or that a back injury helped Bob Propst imagine systems furniture? Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller is an opportunity to learn how chance conversations and everyday experiences were the catalysts for products that have defined the way we live and work.
The exhibit’s next stop is the Austin Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Please stop by if you’re in the area.
In August 2009, the traveling exhibit Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller hit the road. In a multilayered story format, the exhibit examines the development of well-known Herman Miller products, such as the Aeron chair, Action Office, and a selection of iconic Eames products. Each story explores how a need was met through the collaborative, problem-solving approach that Herman Miller does so well.
“When you look at needs and problems, you aren’t inhibited by the market constraints,” says John Berry, guest curator of the exhibit. “It’s very much about understanding a need and meeting that need and creating, as Herman Miller often does, a brand new market.”
The exhibit is the result of a collaboration between the Muskegon Museum of Art (MMA) and The Henry Ford Museum, which houses the largest collection of Herman Miller products in the world. Since its opening at the MMA, Good Design has traveled to four cities: St. Paul, Minnesota; Dearborn, Michigan; Syracuse, New York; and lately, San Angelo, Texas. Wherever it goes, the reception has been enthusiastic.
“Even in San Angelo, in the middle of Texas, the opening attracted 600 people,” says Berry.
“I find that people can relate to the exhibit because these are items that are in the common vernacular,” he adds. “When you see a plastic shell chair that you probably sat on in school, you can say, ‘Oh, that was an Eames design.’ You understand that this chair wasn’t the result of casual decisions. It required serious, robust research to meet real needs.”
The exhibit is scheduled to open at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, from January 29, 2011, to April 3, 2011. Additional stops include Austin, Texas; Midland, Michigan; Chattanooga, Tennessee; San Francisco, California; and Kalamazoo, Michigan, before it ends in 2013.
Herman Miller established the Consortium in 1988 to share our historical product collection that had been accumulating as part of our corporate archives in Zeeland, Michigan. In addition to the furniture pieces, it also includes a large quantity of product literature.
The Ford website houses the Consortium’s huge image database cataloging hundreds of Herman Miller products with photo, name, circa date, designer, and where you can see the actual piece. It’s a great way to learn more about Herman Miller, our history, our products, and our designers–especially if you don’t live near one of the 13 museums that belong to the Consortium.
A traveling design exhibition, Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller, opened this week at the Muskegon Museum of Art (MMA). Showing through November 8, the exhibition will subsequently tour as many as 15 American cities into 2013. Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller explores the collaborative problem-solving design process employed at Herman Miller. Read more
