TULSA, OK.- The Philbrook Museum of Art has opened a new permanent collection gallery highlighting its emerging commitment to industrial design with selections from the promised gift of the George R. Kravis II Collection. This past December, The Museum announced that 100 objects from the Kravis collection would form Philbrook’s core holdings of industrial design.
The exhibition Better Living by Design: Selections from the George R. Kravis II Collection, presentsselections of international twentieth- and twenty-first-century design. The collection includes objects created by iconic figures in the history of design from 1900 to the present, with representation of furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, and plastic, focusing primarily on American industrial design.
The exhibition explores ten popular and appealing design themes and concepts. In “What’s Cooking,” objects designed for the kitchen are featured, including brightly colored ceramic refrigeratorware made by the Hall China Company in the 1930s and ’40s, a mid-century chromium-plated Sunbeam coffeemaker, and a contemporary dish rack designed by Marc Newson.
“Shaken, Not Stirred” includes objects that convey the social ritual of the cocktail hour as it emerged in the 1920s and ’30s. A particularly witty design in this section is a silver plated cocktail shaker in the form of a Penguin, made c. 1936 by the Napier Company. A rare and important design is an enameled aluminum Ice Gun of c. 1935, made by Opco Company, Los Angeles. The futuristic shape of this ice crusher puts one in mind of a space-age cocktail hour with Flash Gordon pouring the drinks.
Two themes focus on objects by the prolific designer Russel Wright. In 1937, Wright and his wife, Mary, introduced a ceramic dinner service line they called American Modern. The designs emphasized soft curves and fluid forms in the biomorphic style with colors that were intended to be mixed for a more informal lifestyle, indicating that democracy had arrived at the American table. The second theme focuses on their aluminumware of the 1930s. A relatively new material at that time, aluminum is light, flexible, yet strong and resistant to corrosion. Wright and his wife participated in the creation, production, and selling of these striking machine-age designs.
Other themes explore mid-century modern furniture and streamlining in the 1930s and ’40s. Examples of toasters, irons, office equipment, radios, television, and contemporary products reflect the importance of design in our lives through history.
George R. Kravis II is a Tulsa philanthropist with great interest in modern artistic expression and industrial design. He is making a promised gift to the Philbrook Museum of Art of a selection of objects from his collection, which he has amassed over the past decade. After Mr. Kravis spent most of his career in the radio broadcasting business, it is not surprising that his collection includes a stunning array of radios, a selection of which is included in the exhibition.
The exhibition is designed by the New York firm Wendy Evans Joseph Architecture, whose work on the renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower in Bartlesville has won international recognition. The firm’s recent installation of the exhibition.
Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward at the Guggenheim Museum in New York has also received critical praise. The exhibition concept for the Philbrook Museum creates a dramatic space for the varied design objects, grouped by themes, in a succession of vitrines that provided a refined, unified look to the gallery.
David A. Hanks is the exhibition curator who selected the objects and developed the themes for Better Living by Design. Formerly the curator of American Decorative Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago and curator of American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for many years he has been the consulting curator for the Macdonald Stewart Foundation in Montreal in the development of an important twentieth-century design collection.
