The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design
Designer Bill Stumpf said, “No new chair can ever be new unless it betters the existing state of the art.” The search for the next advance has been a hallmark of our approach to chair design for over 60 years. The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design, a traveling exhibition by the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Florida is curated on a similar notion.
The exhibit showcases 43 chairs designed between the 1800s and 2000s. Each was chosen for it beauty and historical context with important social, economic, political and cultural influences. Together, they tell a story of American history, from humble beginnings to industrialized nation.
On display is the molded plywood lounge chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1946. Shaping plies of veneer to the contours of the human body, Charles and Ray created a chair important to American design and Herman Miller as well—beginning us on a path to advance the art and science of seating.
Check out the molded plywood lounge chair, among others, at the Westmoreland museum in Greensburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Art of Seating ends April 12, 2012. The next stop on its national tour will be the Columbia Museum of Art, in Columbia, South Carolina.
The Shaker rocking chair is great. That’s actually an example of something that doesn’t have to be new and improved to be worthwhile. The same design still works just as well today.
Daisy
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