LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA presents the groundbreaking exhibition, The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880–1920: Design for the Modern World, placing the arts and crafts movement in its international context for the first time. Transforming not only how objects looked, the Arts and Crafts movement changed how people looked at objects. The exhibition, organized by LACMA, showcases the movement from the United States and throughout Europe with more than 300 objects—including furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and works on paper—borrowed from 75 institutions and private collections as well as from LACMA’s own superb permanent collection. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America remains on view through April 3, 2005.

The Arts and Craft Movement in Europe and America showcases two fully integrated rooms, including a dining room by Peter Behrens—a “model” room from Germany’s Wertheim department store—where the design scheme was repeated throughout: on the chairs, carpet, dinnerware, glassware, and lighting fixtures. To truly fulfill the Arts & Crafts Movement goal of incorporating art and life, art must be widely available, not only for the elite. Department stores became central venues for the dissemination of modernist styles to society and were planned to facilitate the movement of large numbers of customers and display the broad diversity of increased available domestic products.