The painting, with its life-size figures

50,000 people had paid to see the painting before it was bought for $10,000 by a collector, Marshall O. Roberts.

a 9-foot-3-inch-high doorway. The doorway won.

“But this is the centerpiece of the American collections.”

“It’s like the boat that was built in the basement,”

So talking about issues for women in design is not only important for students, but the educators that advise them.

Victoria Rushton

“I know from the classroom that student designers are thirsty for diverse insights on design methodologies, outcomes, and advice on how to create a strong life and work balance,” Horne explains. “I’d like to see females become more confident in publishing their process, ideas, and experiences.

Lucinda Hitchcock

Forty or fifty years ago, the workforce was overwhelmingly a man’s world. In the design field, many women may have been assistants or “office girls” and so few held the top titles, such as art director or creative director. In a basic sense, women’s careers have rarely followed the same path of men’s, since there has historically been immense pressure placed on women to be solely homemakers and nurture families

It is often discussed, academically and informally, that the presence of female designers missing from the history of graphic design is a sore oversight of the profession. And while we can claim more progressive (and equal) laws and beliefs in present day society, the disparity between male and female representation in design lingers on.

In the mid-century, convenience was defined as a place to shop within your town, within a 5- or 10-minute drive from your house,” Wood says. “Whereas our notion of convenience now is not leaving our houses. These ideas of self-sufficiency and self-service have been pushed so far that you go on Amazon and you just say, ‘This is what I want.’ Amazon says, ‘Okay, here’s everything we have that matches that description,’ and then you choose. In actuality, I think Amazon is highly inefficient if you don’t know what you’re buying because you don’t have anyone to help you and say, ‘No, actually, this is better than that.’ Today, we shop as if we know about everything that we’re shopping for, but in the mid-century, you trusted that your department store was going to sell you something that was good

You maybe buy something, or maybe you don’t, but you go just be at the mall.”

Before this change, department stores would have everything behind the glass case, with just one sample out. You’d have to ask the salesgirl, ‘Hey, do you have any other colors?,’ and she would search the stockroom for you. The new stores would have had everything out so shoppers could walk around, see it all, and then choose something on their own and take it to the sales counter.”

Outside of the model rooms, department stores were particularly important when it came to convincing consumers they could use strange new materials in their homes like Formica, fiberglass, vinyl, or Lucite. These materials were even incorporated into the design of the store itself, making consumers more willing to use similar objects at home

In the mid-century, Americans were wanting and buying more,” Wood says. “In response, the department stores offered and displayed more, like the same purse in five colors.

The stores were beautiful spaces that looked and felt modern to people and were simple to walk around

There, housewives would throw away their Rosie the Riveter coveralls and reclaim their “femininity” with new dresses, fashion accessories, and beauty products.

Today, we shop as if we know about everything that we’re shopping for, but in the mid-century, you trusted your department store.

Current numbers predict more than 200 existing big malls will collapse in the next 10 years.

That is because the heroic and stupendously popular 1851 “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” familiar to generations of schoolchildren, is one of the largest paintings in the museum, measuring 21 feet wide and 12 feet high.

stupendously