"She chides him about that and says, 'You know, Jimmy, a gentleman's house isn't an exhibition' — meaning: Get out there and make some money and make some things that are going to sell," says Glazer. "And so, always listening to his mother — Whistler was kind of a Momma's boy — he did invite the press in to watch him work in the Peacock Room."

Glazer reports that Anna Whistler was worried about her son; she thought he was working too hard, not eating, not sleeping:

Now, we can't end this story without talking about Whistler's mother — that iconic profiled figure in gray and black. What did Mama Whistler think of the whole thing — the frenzied work, the manic effort? Glazer reports that Anna Whistler was worried about her son; she thought he was working too hard, not eating, not sleeping:

"This is what it means to be a living artist in this contemporary art world," Waterston says. "It is so filled with excess and this incredible consumption, this insatiable consumption of the object and of aesthetics." The most vivid, even yuck-making example is what Waterston's done to Whistler's two golden peacocks; in this remix, the birds aren't just fighting, they're eviscerating each other.

"There's a sense of danger," says Waterston. He seems cheerful and sweet, but don't be fooled: "My work absolutely has a perversity," he says. "There's always an underbelly to it."

"The shelves are all broken," Waterston says. "The gold gild is either melting off or puddling on the floor."

Next door, in the Sackler Museum of Asian Art, painter Darren Waterston has reproduced and re-interpreted Whistler's dining room in an installation called Filthy Lucre — which means "dirty money." This "Peacock Room Remix" looks as if a wrecking ball has been slammed into Whistler's work. The priceless Asian vases in the original are smashed — their shards litter the floor.

Whistler paints his wealthy patron as a golden peacock, at one end of the dining room. Nearby, another peacock — representing the "poor" artist. "They're actually in a face-off," Glazer says.

The Peacock Room is a gorgeous, gilded cage. "You have no sense whatsoever of the outside world," says Glazer. "It's a world in which art has completely overtaken life."

Curator Lee Glazer agrees that the Peacock Room is a completely immersive experience. "Even though it's a room, it's really a six-sided painting that you literally walk into," she says.

An artist has just converted a legendary piece of 19th-century art into an utter ruin. And two Smithsonian institutions — the Freer and Sackler galleries of Asian art — have given their blessings.

Freer security guard Shaquan Harper spends hours at a time in the Peacock Room — and says it's a peaceful, meditative experience. "Blue is my favorite color, and whenever I wear jewelry it's gold," he says. "So I kind of make a personal connection with the room. This is one of my favorite galleries in the Smithsonian."

The Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery is an actual dining room from London, decorated by James McNeill Whistler in 1876. Its blue-green walls are covered with golden designs and painted peacocks. Gilded shelves hold priceless Asian ceramics. It's an expensive, lavish cocoon, rich in beauty with a dab of menace.

An artist has just converted a legendary piece of 19th-century art into an utter ruin. And two Smithsonian institutions — the Freer and Sackler galleries of Asian art — have given their blessings.

Filthy Lucre

Freer Gallery of Art

Filthy Lucre

National Mall

Lee Glazer

Sackler galleries

The amazing keynote of the Peacock Room, given its crowding with visual incident, is simplicity. Its many elements are indeed harmonic—orchestral, in effect—and resilient, as proved by the design’s unplanned hospitality to Freer’s ceramics. The occasional awkwardness of, say, a pot so big that it almost over-verges its shelf stirs a forgiving consonance in the devil-may-care brushwork on some of Whistler’s decorative panels. There is nothing finicky about the room, apart from certain features of Jeckyll’s style-conscious carpentry. I am bothered only by the caricatures in the peacock-ruckus mural. It occupies a wall that was destined for a painting, “The Three Girls,” which Leyland had commissioned but which Whistler never completed. (A tantalizing oil sketch and figure studies for the proposed masterpiece are among the Freer’s many Whistlers, the largest representation of his work anywhere.) The mural is both funny and gorgeous, but its expression of personal pique disrupts the room’s serenity like a street noise in the night. On one count, the new installation adds a new poetic charm. So interesting, individually, are Freer’s pieces that you may feel frustrated as the room’s higher shelves raise scores of them far above the reach of scrutiny. But I was put in mind of a painting by Fra Angelico in which saints and angels ascend, dancing, to Heaven. As my gaze moved upward, I rather felt that I was tagging along toward such a destination, too. ♦

Whistler missed the express train to modernism when he moved from Paris to London, in the eighteen-sixties, and set up as a bad-boy darling of high society—suing John Ruskin for a negative review, volleying zingers with Oscar Wilde, and, having taxed the Victorians’ scant indulgence of self-promoting upstarts, becoming a frequent laughingstock. But, for a great spell that peaked in the Peacock Room, he achieved a unity of avant-garde spirit and civil decorum which, like other abandoned experiments from the artistic laboratory of the late nineteenth century—now that modernism is defunct—newly excites.

Freer’s highly varied, largely age-worn authentic pots are better art than Leyland’s china, which was, for the most part, export ware from the Kangxi period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The uneven textures and faded iridescence of Freer’s collection yield a modulation of tones that makes up for the wonted éclat of the glossy blues and whites. The arrangement of the pieces is random, without regard for provenance. Sheer sensibility, innocent of scholarship, was Freer’s ideal, as it had been Whistler’s—a solvent for the exoticism of Eastern cultures as they challenged Western imaginations. In the room’s artificial but passionate paradise, East is West, and vice-versa, without the slightest whiff of either sentimentality or condescension.

Where Jeckyll had envisioned a sun-dappled Chinese pavilion—with walls covered in embossed and floral-patterned, bright-yellow leather—Whistler contrived a chamber of the night. He closed the room’s three sets of tall shutters, and painted them and the walls Prussian blue and resonant blue-greens, gilded the shelving, covered the neo-Gothic ribbed ceiling (nearly fourteen feet high) in overlapping petals of Dutch metal (brass oxidizing to green and gold), and filled every incidental surface with freehand abstract patterns and images of peacocks in gold and blue. The whole plainly anticipates Art Nouveau, but without that style’s rote longueurs. It realizes a synesthetic fusion of dazzling spectacle and intimate touch, evoking music and something like a subliminal, ambrosial perfume. Seeing the room as the reinstallation was being completed, with the shutters open, I got to gauge the impact when they were closed. It was like the onset of a deep bass chord out of Wagner. Illuminated by eight pendant ceiling fixtures (which I wish could be gaslights again, as they were in 1877), the room seemed at once to fall asleep and to come fully alert, vividly dreaming.

Where Jeckyll had envisioned a sun-dappled Chinese pavilion—with walls covered in embossed and floral-patterned, bright-yellow leather—Whistler contrived a chamber of the night.

Leyland and his wife, Frances, championed Whistler in England. (She is the subject of my favorite of his paintings, “Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink,” from 1871-74, which is now in the Frick.) Their dining room was already superb. The gifted architect and designer Thomas Jeckyll had lined it with latticed walnut shelving, in a style that was notionally Oriental, to accommodate Leyland’s porcelains, and had hung, over the fireplace, his early Whistler painting of a celebrated beauty of the day, Christina Spartali, as “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” (1864-65). Leyland agreed to pay Whistler a thousand guineas to emend Jeckyll’s scheme, but later, unconvinced of the job’s worth, he delivered the sum in the lesser denomination of pounds. Whistler, infuriated, then painted a satirical mural, in the finished room, representing the artist and his patron as warring peacocks. The Leyland bird is pompous and hectoring, with a breast of gold and platinum coins, windmilling wings, and an immense explosion of tail feathers; the Whistler bird poignantly droops, raising one wing in feeble defense. Leyland lived with this burlesque until his death, in 1892, but his relationship with Whistler had ended in 1879—as had his marriage to Frances, perhaps partly owing to her at least emotional closeness to the artist. Further ancient gossip holds that Thomas Jeckyll was driven mad by Whistler’s overhaul of his design, but it seems that the architect’s mental illness was organic. (He died in an asylum, in 1881.)

Leyland lived with this burlesque until his death, in 1892, but his relationship with Whistler had ended in 1879—as had his marriage to Frances, perhaps partly owing to her at least emotional closeness to the artist. Further ancient gossip holds that Thomas Jeckyll was driven mad by Whistler’s overhaul of his design, but it seems that the architect’s mental illness was organic. (He died in an asylum, in 1881.)

Whistler, infuriated, then painted a satirical mural, in the finished room, representing the artist and his patron as warring peacocks. The Leyland bird is pompous and hectoring, with a breast of gold and platinum coins, windmilling wings, and an immense explosion of tail feathers; the Whistler bird poignantly droops, raising one wing in feeble defense.

Leyland agreed to pay Whistler a thousand guineas to emend Jeckyll’s scheme, but later, unconvinced of the job’s worth, he delivered the sum in the lesser denomination of pounds.

Leyland and his wife, Frances, championed Whistler in England. (She is the subject of my favorite of his paintings, “Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink,” from 1871-74, which is now in the Frick.) Their dining room was already superb. The gifted architect and designer Thomas Jeckyll had lined it with latticed walnut shelving, in a style that was notionally Oriental, to accommodate Leyland’s porcelains, and had hung, over the fireplace, his early Whistler painting of a celebrated beauty of the day, Christina Spartali, as “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” (1864-65).

D.C. Charles Lang Freer, an American railroad-car manufacturer and globe-trotting connoisseur, bought the room, after Leyland’s death, from a London dealer, in 1904, and had it installed at his home, in Detroit.

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room,”

A mania for things Asian raged in England then, in concert with the aestheticist movement—a reaction, exalting unalloyed beauty, against the moralistic constraints of Victorian taste

n 1876-77, James McNeill Whistler altered the décor of the London dining room of his patron Frederick Leyland, a Liverpool shipowner who used the room’s wall shelves to display his vast collection of blue-and-white Chinese porcelains

Birds of a Feather

Kangxi period

Frederick Leyland

Peter Schjeldahl

Whistler’s Peacock Room

Every now and then, a client will tell me how they want their home to look, and I cringe, because they’re describing a pristine museum-like set piece scenario. You and I both know the house.

Have fun and appreciate aesthetics equally, along with good food, drink, relationships, mistakes and carelessness. Appreciate repair. In the end, we’re all just stewards of property and we’re aging right along with it.

I love aesthetics as much as the next person, but don’t let them crowd out your life — don’t prioritize aesthetic order over spontaneous afternoon delight on a newly upholstered sofa or having your geriatric neighbor cruise over for chocolate fondue.

Wabi-sabi should never be a rationalization to quit trying. But we all have to let some things go.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a Grey Gardens way of life, where you let cats piss all over your portraits and raccoons have the run of the parlor

There is more beauty associated with letting nature, and inevitable decay, take its course. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a Grey Gardens way of life, where you let cats piss all over your portraits and raccoons have the run of the parlor. Disrepair can be taken to an extreme. Wabi-sabi should never be a rationalization to quit trying. But we all have to let some things go.

There’s beauty in survival. I’ve learned you can actually train your eye to appreciate the flaw, the injury and the repair. That’s wabi-sabi — embracing the imperfect and the impermanence of nature... and life. I have a casual familiarity with this Japanese philosophy/aesthetic, but my takeaway is to enjoy the transience of everything. Perfection should never be a goal, because it’s static — a snapshot in time — and can never be a moving picture.

Maybe it’s the English in me. My parents lived through World War II and their credo was “You make do.” People at every income level were making do during wartime. My father, ‘til the end of his life, took rolls of two-ply loo paper and made them one ply rolls. Generations that went through war and deprivation understand that what’s important is life, and not aesthetics. Patina is a word that people throw around, but it’s real, in that it’s earned and should really be appreciated. One of the reasons I always love rehabilitating “ruined” properties is because I will not obliterate the patina of age — I honor it and respect it as a reminder of what’s truly important: A house is really only a stage for your life and the lives of your loved ones.

World War II

So it’s a little incongruous that I found myself practicing interior design in LA — Earth’s bastion of hyper-personal grooming and size zeros cruising around with flutes of un-drunk champagne. The décor equivalent of this Angeleno would be a monochromatic white on white living room with blonde on blonde furnishings, everything lined up and relined up, all square, with cadres of cushions and pillows fluffed and dented, coffee table art books perfectly stacked into pyramids and never cracked. And walls mirrored to maximize the impact of perfection through infinity.

foie gras

When I finish a job for a client, I advocate beating the fear to the punch with... more fear. Instead of waiting for wear and tear to happen naturally, throw something imperfect into the tableau so the wait’s over. Better yet, “drop” a glass of red wine onto the rug and then grind a little foie gras into the stain immediately, so that you can get it over with and start living. If a room isn’t inviting, what’s the point? Nevertheless, people still chase those perfect rooms. (Be careful, because you can’t actually do it and it’s no fun if you can.)

“Perfect” interior décor can be captivating in photographs, but underlying the flawless arrangement of drapery, wallpaper and furnishings is a palpable fear of anticipation — when will this mirage of a showroom become, you know, “used?”

mirage

an aesthetic that completely breaks down when your new housekeeper sprays Formula 409 on your premium art books, paintings and candles while you’re out getting your vagina re-contoured.

You can’t dance in a corner. An over-decorated/accessorized space leaves little room to do anything but sit with knees pressed together — an aesthetic that completely breaks down when your new housekeeper sprays Formula 409 on your premium art books, paintings and candles while you’re out getting your vagina re-contoured.

Every now and then, a client will tell me how they want their home to look, and I cringe, because they’re describing a pristine museum-like set piece scenario. You and I both know the house. Visually perfect in every way,but ultimately inhospitable. No oxygen left in the composition for laughter or old people or anyone who doesn’t have perfect balance. No room for kids or dogs. No place to live. But many people insist on turning their houses into some kind of fetish that delivers a voyeuristic thrill — rooms to look at, but that have little capacity for real life. The French call this look coince (accent on the e), which means wedged or jammed or stuck or cornered.

By Kathryn M. Ireland

Wabi-Sabi

My Strange Love of Wabi-Sabi

The painting created another stir when it was presented at the April 1864 Art Exhibition at the Metropolitan Fair in Aid of the United States Sanitary Commission, a benefit for Union soldiers. The image was widely distributed in Europe, and in America it has adorned postcards, postage stamps and coffee mugs. Currier and Ives issued an altered unauthorized version, Professor Fischer said.

Through the centuries the painting has been criticized aesthetically and for historical shortcomings. (The design of the fluttering American flag, for example, was not yet in use.) “You can add one inaccuracy to another, but Leutze understood the air of desperation, the small scale of the event and the very large meaning,” Professor Fischer said. “He got all of that right.”

The crossing was a pivot point in a crucial campaign that rescued the revolution from failure,” Professor Fischer said, adding that it burnished not only Washington’s reputation as a leader, but also brought foreign support for the rebels’ cause.

The painting, with its life-size figures, “is one of the most frequently reproduced images in American culture,” said David Hackett Fischer, Warren professor of history at Brandeis University and author of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Washington’s Crossing.” Leutze’s highly romanticized rendition captures a desperate effort, a turning point in American history, when on Christmas night in 1776 George Washington crossed the Delaware River with 2,500 troops in a surprise attack on Hessian soldiers.

Nevertheless the image of the frame has now been digitized, and Eli Wilner — a Manhattan antique-frame dealer whose artisans have made replicas for the Met, the Smithsonian and the White House — expects to be able to discern details “within an eighth of an inch,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Long Island City, Queens, a master woodcarver, Félix Terán, has completed a two-foot-long test carving of the frame’s elaborate eagle crest from blowups of the Brady photograph. Working in the 11,000-foot studio space of Eli Wilner & Company, a former eggroll factory, Mr. Terán created the mockup to test the depth of sculptural relief and the placement of the frame’s embellishments.“It’s a challenge to carve, since there isn’t a whole lot of detail in the blowup,” said Mr. Terán, who was born into a family of woodcarvers in a town of woodcarvers, San Antonia de Ibarra, in Ecuador.

the White House

She explained that conservators are refining a plan to remove layers of varnish for the painting’s first surface-cleaning in decades. Currently the image is yellowish; at places in the blue sky clots of dirt and debris suggest a nonexistent flock of birds. And the prophetic morning star above Washington is barely visible.Meanwhile, in Long Island City, Queens, a master woodcarver, Félix Terán, has completed a two-foot-long test carving of the frame’s elaborate eagle crest from blowups of the Brady photograph. Working in the 11,000-foot studio space of Eli Wilner & Company, a former eggroll factory, Mr. Terán created the mockup to test the depth of sculptural relief and the placement of the frame’s embellishments.

Emanuel Leutze

The monumental work by Emanuel Leutze is ranked among the top five artworks in the museum’s visitor-popularity surveys. It is believed that the painting was rolled up to make its original trip to the museum, as it was to fit into its current space for the 1980 opening of the American Wing. The potential for damage prevents the canvas from being rolled now. The scale of the painting’s conservation and reframing, which is to begin later this year, “is unprecedented in the history of the museum, to my knowledge,” Dr. Barratt said. “But it is still very much a research project.”

Carrie Rebora Barratt

The challenge is reminiscent of the construction of the Hayden Planetarium around the 15.5-ton Willamette Meteorite in 1935, a feat repeated in 2000 when the $210 million Rose Center for Earth and Space was built around that same artifact.

Willamette Meteorite

Washington Crossing the Delaware.

It is heavy too, and will be getting heavier, because curators are currently assessing the best way to carve an elaborate new 3,000-pound basswood frame that would replicate the original, missing for more than a century. After years of detective work, an image of the frame was recently discovered in a 143-year-old Mathew Brady photograph.Since the canvas cannot be removed through the doorway of its home on the second floor of the museum’s American Wing, its years-long refurbishment will be carried out within the gallery. And an entire new suite of galleries for American paintings and sculpture — scheduled to open in 2010 as the finale of the American Wing renovations — must be built around “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”

It is heavy too, and will be getting heavier, because curators are currently assessing the best way to carve an elaborate new 3,000-pound basswood frame that would replicate the original, missing for more than a century. After years of detective work, an image of the frame was recently discovered in a 143-year-old Mathew Brady photograph.

One of the most complex restoration and reframing projects in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has collided with a 9-foot-3-inch-high doorway. The doorway won.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.

What Surrounds a Legend? A 3,000-Pound Gilt Frame

Of course, markets and bazaars featuring different vendors selling a variety of goods existed long before the department store. The big difference was at a department store, all the individual shops belonged to the same business, so they had consistent policies. (To small-time shopkeepers, these new department stores threatened their livelihood the way Amazon upsets brick-and-mortar retail today.) In New York City, A.T. Stewart pioneered this new format: his eight-story, 19-department “Iron Palace” offered goods carefully curated from around the world—from clothes to carpets, toys to china—for fixed prices, meaning no haggling was necessarily. His store offered customers special services like free delivery and

Fixtures might seem like a small thing, but they were key to drawing in postwar shoppers, who were growing hooked on modern convenience and efficiency—at the time, cafeterias, drive-ins, and automats were way more exciting than sit-down restaurants. Of course, high-end department stores, like Ransohoff’s in San Francisco, continued to offer the full-service shopping experience. High-society ladies still enjoyed getting dressed from head-to-toe, the way you see Jimmy Stewart having saleswomen remake Kim Novak in 1958’s “Vertigo.” But by and large, the booming mid-century middle class wanted shopping autonomy.

“He really created a much brighter and lighter atmosphere,” Wood says. “Fixtures go from being very heavy pieces of furniture to being these ‘invisible’ pieces that really highlight the merchandise. Modular and movable, they could house stock within them and grow or shrink, depending on the merchandise that you wanted to display that season or that month.”

Victorian department stores were not only sectioned off into myriad departments, they were also dark, crowded places, with merchandise stuffed in imposing glass cases and dense wood furniture. That’s why when Loewy debuted his vision at the Gimbels in downtown New York with a pastel color scheme and “invisible” fixtures in 1948, it caused a stir.

The stores were designed to create an expansive view so you could come off of the escalator, look around, and see all of the well-labeled departments, instead of having the departments walled off,” Wood says. “It was all about paring down the interior. The stores were beautiful spaces that looked and felt modern to people and were simple to walk around. And Loewy’s plan wasn’t just about how shoppers experienced the space, but how the stores could more efficiently sell their merchandise.”

At his namesake firm Raymond Loewy Associates, the esteemed industrial designer—who’s known for redesigning Coca-Cola vending machines, Lucky Strike packages, Coldspot refrigerators, and the Studebaker Avanti—and his partner, William Snaith, came up with a standard vision for modernizing department stores in the late 1940s. It was rolled out in remodeled New York City flagship stores like Gimbels, Bloomingdale’s, and Lord & Taylor. Then it spread across the country through downtown stores and new suburban branches. Soon, department-store chains like Neiman Marcus and Foley’s based in Texas and JCPenney based in Wyoming adopted the Loewy plan as well.

Raymond Loewy Associates

“In the early 20th century, department stores, located downtown, were opulent and over the top, reflecting the Victorian and Edwardian obsession with excess and wealth,” Wood says. “To most people, they were aspirational spaces celebrating what you couldn’t have, unless you were extremely wealthy. In the mid-century, there’s still a bit of an aspirational ideal in department stores, but it’s much more toned down. With the booming middle class and the introduction of credit cards, the shopping experience is much more about what you can have.”

Edwardian

Of course, this surge of consumers needed somewhere to go, explains Alessandra Wood, a design historian who blogs at Huffington Post and is writing her Ph.D. dissertation on mid-century department stores for the University of Delaware. Into the void stepped forward-thinking designer Raymond Loewy, who took the fusty, old concept of the department store and reinvented it for these eager shoppers. As the young couples were drawn into these stores to start their new lives, Loewy and other designers were gently ushering them into the Modern Age of Design. Ultimately, Loewy didn’t just alter American style or tastes, he changed the way Americans consume.

Huffington Post

Victorian Era

But 60 years ago, these same department stores, particularly the new branches installed in fledging suburban shopping malls, were the way to the future. Post-World War II prosperity meant returning vets and their wives could ditch the turmoil of overcrowded cities, the frugal values of the Depression, and the frilly heirlooms of the Victorian Era. They would build their dream homes in the suburbs and fill them with shiny new appliances and furnishings made of cutting-edge materials, like acrylic and fiberglass, developed for the war. There, housewives would throw away their Rosie the Riveter coveralls and reclaim their “femininity” with new dresses, fashion accessories, and beauty products.

Often, the mall’s anchors, the big chain department stores, are the first to go. It seems that the 2008 recession and dominance of the Internet—where you can buy anything and everything with a few clicks—have taken their toll on brick-and-mortar behemoths like JCPenney, Sears, and even Macy’s. As the Computer Age thrusts us into the future, would-be mall rats are spending all their time on Facebook, and the breath-taking range of products, once so meticulously displayed for our delight, is being crammed into our PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

dead malls

he once-vibrant shopping mall has one foot in the grave these days. About 20 percent of the 2,000 largest U.S. malls were failing in 2008, and by 2012, only 1,513 remained in operation. Current numbers predict more than 200 existing big malls will collapse in the next 10 years. Search the phrase, “dead malls,” and you’ll find photo after photo of tiled walkways littered with debris, untended planters near the darkened rest areas for bored dads, and empty indoor storefronts—the discolored shadows of their missing lighted signs lingering like ghosts.

From Retail Palace to Zombie Mall: How Efficiency Killed the Department Store

Despite notions that the issue of sex is obsolete in graphic design, only a small fraction of active female designers receive public acclamation. Margaret Calvert, a designer who defined the British network of roadways with her typeface design in the 1960s, never received wide recognition for this development. Presently, all road signs in Great Britain include her designs, an important contribution to the cultural landscape of England, but attempting to research this work and topic results in articles surrounding her partner, Jock Kinneir. Recently, after the passing of her studio partner, she has finally begun receiving more recognition for her work. Calvert’s experience is just an example of the oversight many designers encounter.

How does this apply to practitioners in the field—both new and seasoned designers? Is it still important to talk about “women of graphic design” as a topic? Horne speculates that despite the work of revolutionary gender activists, there are still indications that issues for women in design need to be discussed. She names a few: oversights in the organization of jury panels, lack of female representation in anthologies and survey publications and a propagation of blogs reinforcing strict ideas of gender.

“Right now, my classroom is probably filled with 80% women. And yet when I go out into the world, or when you hear from business owners or from creative directors, it’s not the same percentage. What is that, why is that? We can only guess.”

“Problems still perpetuate if the media only represents those with the highest profiles, if conference organisers don’t do their research to discover new and relevant voices, if education doesn’t look at a range of role models, if teachers ignore discussions on gender and representation; then, we are not taking our responsibility as designers, as a profession, as educators, and our duty to the public, seriously enough.”

Should it matter to the structure of design education if the majority of design students are female? Is it a matter of fairness that emerging designers require encouragement, and part of that is seeing their sex represented in the professional field and in the teaching of design? Brockett Horne, a designer and the Chair of Graphic Design at Maryland Institute College of Art, believes young female designers could greatly benefit from a change in the exposure and representation of women in graphic design. “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. I see this as a continuity of tradition that we have inherited from the artists and designers who fought hard for us to sit at the table.

He believes that revealing only part of our history fails to fully inform our designers. “It’s important that these women get the recognition, because they were and are part of the history that’s shaping graphic design. Everyone needs to learn about them and their work, especially young designers. If not, then there’s just this big gap that doesn’t tell the entire story of graphic design.”

Jacqueline S. Casey

Antonio Carusone.

Hitchcock adds, “Why does design history still teach about male designers 80% more than women designers? Why do we have 80 % women in the student body (in our [RISD] department) and 80% men in the faculty?”

Lucinda Hitchcock

Design history has long overlooked women in our narrative, despite continuously having a large group of women active in the field of graphic design over the past century.

Why is it important to talk about the women of graphic design, specifically? What are the issues women still face in the design field? To better understand these questions, I sought out different voices from within the spectrum of graphic design.

There is a line of forgotten women in our history. I argue that sexism is somewhat less obvious in our workplace today, far subtler than it might have been in the 1950s and 60s, but perhaps we still accept some mores of old, underlying currents that flow through our design culture, much like that lecture in 2011.

creative director

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 (see: Beyond The Glass Ceiling: an open discussion, Astrid Stavro, Elephant #6) with more sinister pressures of socially-accepted sexism and segregation discouraging, or even disqualifying, the career ambitions of capable women.

The National Education Association reports of 2011 estimated that 54% of all US designers in the profession are women. In the UK it is lower, although the Design Council research found that 70% of design students in the UK are women, but 60% of the industry is male. I was curious to explore the reductive process by which these female majorities dwindle

It’s the spring of 2011 and I am sitting in History of Graphic Design, a lecture course at my design school. We are learning about the many designers and movements essential to the narrative of graphic design. Designer’s names are listed on a page, hundreds of them. It’s so subtle; I almost miss it. Later on, I would count the names — three hundred and twenty-three independent designers listed — twenty-two women. In the history of graphic design, my classmates and I were learning about just twenty-two women. That was only 6% of the overall canon. Surely this was a mistake.

Graphic Design,

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. But why is retrospective accreditation important? And if it is getting better, do we need to keep talking about it? Tori Hinn, of Women of Graphic Design, talks through some of the issues facing women in the past, and regrettably, in our industry today.

Women in Graphic Design (and why we need to talk about them)

Jadeite Cabbage

National Palace museum

Chiang Kai-shek

Taiwan

United States presidential election cycle of 2016

Active transportation routes and linear parks, on the other hand, regenerate their surroundings, bringing activity and value to blighted sections of the city. They also radically alter the political situation for the suburb and its inevitable commute. Of course, the creation of these green networks need not be at the expense of the motorist. On the 10th July London’s Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy launched a study for London that envisaged burying sections of the North and South Circular ring roads, and stretches of road close to the Thames. The initiative would create linear parks overhead, much as the Big Dig did for Boston.

It envisioned a 1km stretch of dual carriageway between Salford University and Manchester city centre as a 4-lane linear Park. One lane is grassed, another a water channel, another sand and the last a running track. Commuters leave their cars in a multi-storey Car (P)Ark. The interchange also incorporates a suburban train station, cycle docking station, stables, and a boathouse and changing rooms. From the Car (P)Ark commuters head east into Manchester walking, jogging, cycling, rollerblading, horse riding, swimming or rowing. The Park terminates at a Suit Park where commuters can shower, change and get a coffee. (The word “suit” refers to the business suit). Eight hours later, on their way home, commuters deposit their clothes and return through the Park, to the interchange to collect their car or catch a train. The scheme could be extended to each of the radial routes into Manchester and at intervals these Parks could link, completing a comprehensive green commuter infrastructure.

Imagine that the Boris Bike docking stations outside railway stations and in key public spaces might incorporate general cycle parking. Thus the Cycle City would bring with it a new building type – the multistory cycle park. Fietsenstalling, a multistorey cycle park outside Amsterdam’s Centraal rail station, with its Escher-like pattern of steel decks that suspend over the canal, is a dramatic model. Its very presence is didactic. It is persuasive.

The day of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral at St.Paul’s Cathedral gave me an indication. For security reasons, much of the Square Mile was closed to vehicular traffic; the streets were preserved for the pedestrian and the cyclist. What I remember about that day was the sense of calm, how quiet it was, and how generous the streets actually felt. For a brief moment the public realm was uniquely different. Imagine: whilst it may not be possible to ban the car outright, it ought to be possible to keep HGVs and delivery vans out during the day, when their impact on the physical environment and the safety of pedestrians and cyclists is most evident.

From an architect’s perspective though, the question remains: what will Cycle cities be like?

This monumental feat of engineering offers us the best precedent for the impact the bicycle might have on London or any city for that matter. Cycling offers us, for the first time in more than a century and a half, the chance to build an infrastructure that will bring with it significant public health improvements. In our auto-centric world, we have unprecedented levels of health problems - obesity, diabetes, etc - all associated with our sedentary lifestyles. Cycling should mean a fitter population and a longer life expectancy, which would take pressure off the National Health Service and bring huge economic benefits. It would of course also reduce energy consumption.

But it’s the work of Joseph Bazalgette, the chief engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, that stands out to me - not just for its contribution to public health but also for its potential parallels to Cycle Space. For much of its history London had been associated with poor living conditions and disease. By the late 1850s the scale of the city was making things worse: London’s sewage was deposited into the River Thames, out of which the city’s drinking water was being collected. Bazalgette’s solution was to construct a series of sewers that would run parallel to the Thames, both north and south of the river, collecting the sewage and ensuring the drinking water that was drawn from the river was clean.

f Joseph Bazalgette,

Of course, the tabula rasa model wasn’t necessary. It was ideological. But it brought with it flats with fitted kitchens, bathrooms and toilets. This prompted the gradual gentrification of the remaining streets. Indoor toilets were fitted, and bedrooms and sculleries were converted into bathrooms and kitchens in the surviving 19th century housing stock.

tabula rasa model

In the Twentieth Century, Corbusian Modernism eventually had a monumental impact on London’s streets and skyline. Again the catalyst was in part a disaster - the havoc wreaked by the Luftwaffe and the need for rapid reconstruction - and the solution was political. The dilapidated terraced houses with their back yards and privies were associated with poverty and poor living conditions. Modernity, and the mass production of homes demonstrated optimism, and a commitment to those who had survived the war. It was a tangible dimension of the newly established Welfare State.

Corbusian Modernism

Take London in 1667, a year after the Great Fire of 1666. An Act of Parliament was passed that introduced building inspectors to ensure that buildings be built from brick and not timber (a law which predated the fire, but that hadn’t been enforced). Of course, the fire and resulting devastation meant that much of London had to be rebuilt, and that these buildings would be brick.

the Great Fire of 1666.

Towards the end of my trip, it occurred to me that this explosion in cycling, ought to be put into an historic context, in order to enable the politicians and the public to recognize the scale of the opportunity, the change it might bring to our cities and our lives.

New York already has one.

What impressed us was the speed of progress. When we were in Chicago at the end of June, the city launched its own bike share scheme. New York already has one. The docking stations bring tangible cycle infrastructure to the city streets. In-carriage and separated cycle routes have begun to proliferate. Disused railway lines are being harnessed as leisure trails, and in some cases these were working well for commuters too. Indianapolis had recently completed their “Cultural Trail,” an active transportation loop linking the five central city districts.

Recently I took four weeks out of the office to cycle from Chicago to New York and to visit cities along the way. My 1,300 mile trip was part of a group expedition called P2P that went from Portland, Oregon to Portland Place in London (read more about it on portlandtoportland.org). The objective was to report back to the UK and London in particular on American city-cycling culture and the political initiatives that are emerging in the US.

However, the real question is: will cycling actually change the city? Will it result in new urban forms or, as the title of Australian academic Dr Steven Fleming’s new book predicts, a “Cycle Space”? Like Fleming, I believe so. I believe that cycling might just be the catalyst for a 21st Century urban renaissance.

The 2010 launch of the “Boris Bike” - London’s cycle hire scheme, named after mayor Boris Johnson – was the clearest indication to date that cycling was no longer just for a minority of fanatics but a healthy, efficient and sustainable mode of transport that city planners wanted in their armoury. There are now more than 8,000 Boris Bikes and 550+ docking stations in Central London. And the trend’s not anomalous to London: Wikipedia reports that there are 535 cycle-share schemes in 49 countries, employing more than half a million bikes worldwide.

To that end, museum officials transferred some of the institution’s most popular attractions to the Southern Branch and offered free admission to residents of three southern counties for the first three months after its opening.

Thus the inaugural exhibitions at the Southern Branch showcased blue-and-white porcelain objects featuring Islamic calligraphy—presented as gifts between Chinese and Persian ruling families—and Japanese and Korean ceramics, which underscore techniques shared by Chinese artisans. Permanent exhibitions on Asian textiles and Buddhist art further highlight the history of positive cultural exchange across Asia.

By investing over NT$10.9 billion (U.S. $350 million) to create a world-class tourist destination in this southern municipality, the Taiwanese government intentionally placed cultural industries at the center of Jiayi’s 21st-century economic development plan.

Drawing nearly 1.5 million visitors in 2016, its first year, the Southern Branch doesn’t just promote globalization in the abstract, it also positions Jiayi to reap its benefits. By investing over NT$10.9 billion (U.S. $350 million) to create a world-class tourist destination in this southern municipality

And the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights asserts the right of all people “to take part in cultural life,” as well as the responsibility of governments to “achieve the full realization of this right [through]…the conservation, the development, and the diffusion of science and culture.”

By recognizing that all Americans deserve “fair and equitable access to cultural resources and support,” Americans in the Arts is echoing what Taiwan has long known—that cultural equity is the bedrock of a stable and flourishing democracy.  

The U.S. has lagged behind when it comes to the issue of cultural access. But in 2016, Americans for the Arts, the largest U.S. think-tank and advocacy group for arts and cultural research, released its “Statement on Cultural Equity.”

Musée de Louvre in Paris and Le Louvre Lens in Pas-de-Calais, 200 kilometers to the north—to develop integrated programming that would drive some of the National Palace Museum, Taipei’s 6 million annual visitors to the Southern Branch. Taiwanese legislator Weng Chong-Jun has stated that these visitors won’t only benefit Jiayi’s economy through the tourist sector, they will also boost the region’s historic tea industry.

Drawing nearly 1.5 million visitors in 2016, its first year, the Southern Branch doesn’t just promote globalization in the abstract, it also positions Jiayi to reap its benefits. By investing over NT$10.9 billion (U.S. $350 million) to create a world-class tourist destination in this southern municipality, the Taiwanese government intentionally placed cultural industries at the center of Jiayi’s 21st-century economic development plan.

While the National Palace Museum’s two branches share many works, each has a slightly different angle on Chinese cultural heritage. Unlike the older National Palace Museum, Taipei, which showcases objects from the imperial collections of past Chinese dynasties, the Southern Branch is forward-looking, laying the groundwork for a narrative of pan-Asian identity. Driving this shift is Taiwan’s underlying geopolitical strategy to decrease its dependence on Mainland China and increase its ties with the rest of Asia.

To that end, museum officials transferred some of the institution’s most popular attractions to the Southern Branch and offered free admission to residents of three southern counties for the first three months after its opening. Curators ensured that prized antiquities—such as the crowd-pleasing Jadeite Cabbage, a piece of jade carved into the form of the green vegetable—would make their rounds at the Southern Branch and attract local visitors. The inclusion of a permanent exhibition about tea culture across Asia offered an additional point of entry to residents of these counties, where tea cultivation is a major sector of the local economy.

By creating a new southern branch of the National Palace museum, the government would correct cultural policies that privileged the more developed, metropolitan North, where Taipei is located, over the more rural, agricultural South. With the opening of its Southern Branch in early 2016, a poor Jiayi farmer can access Taiwan’s cultural resources as easily as a wealthy Taipei banker.

As Taiwanese society grew more democratic from the 1970s onward, and as Taiwanese identity grew more distinct from Mainland China, the role of Taiwan’s cultural policy also shifted—from elitism toward inclusivity and from cultural chauvinism toward cosmopolitanism. At the beginning of the new millennium, Taiwan’s highest legislative body, the Legislative Yuan, announced an ambitious project to provide all citizens with equal access to national cultural heritage. Proposed in 2001 by former museum director Tu Cheng-sheng, the project had an explicit mission to address “the cultural equity between Northern and Southern Taiwan.”