Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Showcasing selected works from The Museum of Modern Art's superlative architecture and design collection, Objects of Design features a wide variety of industrial and domestic artifacts by great designers of the modern period, from early masters such as Hector Guimard, Frank Lloyd Wright and Josef Hoffmann to contemporary practitioners including Droog Design, Ettore Sottsas, Gaetano Pesce, Hella Jongerius and others. Some of the objects represent turn-of-the-century designs of the Vienna Secession, Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement; others are Bauhaus and de Stijl explorations; still others show Charles and Ray Eames and other American designers of the second half of the 20th century; representations of the Italian design revolutions; and contemporary manifestations of familiar genres using radical new materials and techniques of manufacture. The book's 360 color plates not only reveal the range of aesthetic viewpoints in design since the late 19th century but together trace the historical development of the Museum's celebrated design collection. In the introductory essay, Paola Antonelli, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, explores the history of modern design as well as the story of the museum's collection and its influence on the history of modern and contemporary design itself.









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Rating: - Objects of Design from The Museum of Modern Art
MoMA canonized modern design as it did 20th-century art, and this anthology of pictures and expert texts highlights a collection of 3,708 objects that range in size from microchips to a helicopter. About a tenth of those are illustrated in nine thematic sections. Many are icons, but there are a few surprises, especially among recent acquisitions, where the inventive use of materials supplants functional beauty. Paola Antonelli, MoMA Curator of Architecture and Design, describes the collection as presenting a history of ideas and realizing a part of Alfred Barr's dream of a unity of the arts. She explains how the old selection criteria of truth and beauty have changed while retaining some of their old authority. It's comforting to know that relativism does not yet extend to firearms, making MoMA's collection a gun-free zone. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)