This seminar showcases the importance of traditional design and craft skills through daily life in India, Shaker communities in America and the Mingei movement in Japan. Moving into the twentieth century, the rise of Modernism will be explored through key movements including suffrage and Art Nouveau.
This is the second seminar in the three part series: Observations: Moments in Design History.
With a focus on the NGV’s leading collection of historical decorative arts and design, across three seminars historians, writers and curators from around the world examine the movements, materials and manufacturers that shaped global design across centuries.
The entire collection of presentations, conversations and lectures will be transcribed into a printed publication, giving audiences the opportunity to revisit the content from Observations: Moments in Design History. Participants can pre-purchase a copy of the book, set to be released in May 2024, when booking into the seminars.
NGV Members, students and educators enjoy discounted tickets to all Observations seminars.
Program schedule released closer to the event. Participants will have access to content for 4 weeks following the seminar.
TOPICS & SPEAKERS
Design: The India Story
Divya Thakur, Founder, Design Temple & Museum of Design Excellence. Thakur is an interdisciplinary designer and curator and a virtual powerhouse of design thinking, product and practice. Over a period of twenty years, she has consistently blazed new paths across multiple disciplines like spaces, products, still and motion graphics, making her a critical force in shaping taste and trend. Her work, environment and spirit are featured in Vogue, Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, New York Times besides many other leading dailies, magazines and design blogs.
Shaker Design
Sarah Margolis-Pineo is an independent curator, collections specialist, and writer, focused on American design and craft. Currently, she is an Associate of John Keith Russell (New York), a gallery specializing in Shaker furniture and material culture. Previously, Margolis-Pineo was Curator of Hancock Shaker Village, and has held positions in the curatorial departments of American Folk Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft, and Cranbrook Art Museum.
Mingei
Hanai Hisaho is Curator at The National Gallery of Modern Art, Tokyo, specialising in the history of modern art, crafts and design. Recently, she has been researching images of haniwa (clay figurines) and excavated artifacts in modern art. Curated exhibitions include Itaya Hazan ; Celebrating the Artist on the 50th Anniversary of His Death (2013-14), Japanese Crafts: Materials, Techniques, and Regionalities (2020), 100 Years of Mingei : The Folk Crafts Movement (2021-2022), Secrets of National Important Cultural Properties (2023), and The Making of Munakata Shiko; Celebrating the 120th Anniversary of the Artist (2023).
Design and Social Change: The Suffrage Movement
Dr Zoë Thomas is Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmimgham, UK. She is a specialist in modern Anglophone history, the Arts and Crafts movement, suffrage, and feminism. She is author of the multi prize winning monograph Women Art Workers and the Arts and Crafts Movement (2020) alongside two co-edited collections, Precarious Professionals: Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain (2021) and Suffrage and the Arts: Visual Culture, Politics and Enterprise (2016).
Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts and Frank Lloyd Wright: An Icon
Christopher Long is Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professor of Architectural and Design History at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has published widely on Central European and American modernism. His recent books include The New Space: Movement and Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture (2016); Essays on Adolf Loos (2019); Adolf Loos: The Late Houses (2020); Jock Peters—Architecture and Design: The Varieties of Modernism (2021), and, most recently, Adolf Loos: Meaning, Context, Reception (2023).
Frank Lloyd Wright: Fallingwater
Robert McCarter is a practicing architect, author, and Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. He has taught at nine universities; he has had twenty-five buildings of his design realised; and he has authored twenty-five books, including Louis I. Kahn, Grafton Architects, Marcel Breuer, Aldo van Eyck, Herman Hertzberger, Steven Holl, Alvar Aalto, Carlo Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wiel Arets, Frank Lloyd Wright: Critical Lives, and Understanding Architecture (with Juhani Pallasmaa). In 2018 McCarter was an International Exhibitor in the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture, and he was named one of the “Ten Best Architecture Teachers in the US” in 2009.
Observations: Moments in Design History is generously supported by an Anonymous donor.