But department stores didn’t really update their format to suit changing customer tastes until the 1930s.

every city worth its salt had a department store downtown

During the 19th century,

Our notion of convenience now is not leaving our houses.”

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 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts for all people “the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

former museum director Tu Cheng-sheng

first female president

a robust East Asian democracy that last January elected its first female president, cultural equity is serious business—and it offers a strong model for the U.S. to consider.

Museum Access to Rural Poor

Upon Freer’s death, in 1919, his will endowed the Freer Gallery, which opened, four years later, as the first of the Smithsonian art museums. Last week, the Freer débuted a temporary reinstallation of the Peacock Room, by the curator Lee Glazer, which re-creates the way it appeared in photographs from 1908—adorned not with the porcelains (Leyland’s collection was long gone by then) but with two hundred and fifty-four of Freer’s own Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Middle Eastern earthenware and stoneware ceramics, which he left to the museum. For two years, they will replace the room’s usual, limited number of blue-and-white pieces similar to Leyland’s. The effect is wonderful.

The Peacock Room

Fra Angelico

van Gogh and Cézanne

Impressionists

the room seemed at once to fall asleep and to come fully alert, vividly dreaming.

blue-and-white Chinese porcelains.

altered the décor of the London dining room of his patron Frederick Leyland,

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.

John Ruskin

Oscar Wilde

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

Art Nouveau

Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink

Perfect” interior décor can be captivating in photographs, but underlying the flawless arrangement of drapery, wallpaper and furnishings is a palpable fear of anticipation

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.

don’t prioritize aesthetic order over spontaneous afternoon delight on a newly upholstered sofa or having your geriatric neighbor cruise over for chocolate fondue. Have fun and appreciate aesthetics equally, along with good food, drink, relationships, mistakes and carelessness

In the end, we’re all just stewards of property and we’re aging right along with it

but don’t let them crowd out your life

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

Grey Gardens

Japanese philosophy/aesthetic

Who cares if the table tops are not quite true? If the scale of upholstered furniture is slightly off? If some turned table legs are cabriolet and others are claw and ball?

when will this mirage of a showroom become, you know, “used?

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.

coince

My Strange Love of Wabi-Sabi

Wabi-Sabi

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.

He believes that revealing only part of our history fails to fully inform our designers.

“Not enough women designers are given the recognition that they deserve,” says graphic designer Antonio Carusone. “Take for example Jacqueline S. Casey. She is primarily responsible for bringing the International Typographic Style to the US, and her work is just as brilliant as Muller-Brockmann’s, Crouwel’s, Ruder’s…. But for some reason, her name is left out most of the time.

In the US, some 70% of design students are female, yet their education is scattered with gaps

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

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.

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.

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

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.

hree 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.

Tori Hinn

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.

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

comes heavy traffic, noise and pollution

The social revolution that Bazalgette offered London in the 19th Century, Cycle Space might just bring to London and our world’s cities in the 21st.

Peter Hendy

Corbusian Modernism

One lane is grassed, another a water channel, another sand and the last a running track.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

. I believe that cycling might just be the catalyst for a 21st Century urban renaissance

Recently I took four weeks out of the office to cycle from Chicago to New York and to visit cities along the way.

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.

The 2010 launch of the “Boris Bike”

On a ribbon under the eagle, barely discernible even at high magnification, were the words of Henry Lee, Washington’s 1799 eulogist: “First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Hayden Planetarium

A 3,000-Pound Gilt Frame

Emanuel Leutze

David Hackett Fischer

Carrie Rebora Barratt,

The monumental work by Emanuel Leutze is ranked among the top five artworks in the museum’s visitor-popularity surveys.

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.

“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.

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.

“It’s like the boat that was built in the basement,” said Carrie Rebora Barratt,

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.

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.

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.” 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.

Exhibitions at the Southern Branch serve at least two important functions: to educate viewers about other cultures, and to reveal that cultural purity is a myth. By showcasing the fruits of cultural exchange, the Southern Branch suggests that the strongest defense against protectionist tendencies is a broader sense of identity.

With globalization, Taiwanese farmers are forced to compete with cheap agricultural goods from China and Southeast 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.

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.

While the National Palace Museum’s two branches share many works, each has a slightly different angle on Chinese cultural heritage

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.

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.

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.

Since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party fled to Taiwan with imperial treasures in tow as the Communist Party took over Mainland China, cultural stewardship has been a first-order concern for the Taiwanese government.

In Taiwan, a robust East Asian democracy that last January elected its first female president, cultural equity is serious business—and it offers a strong model for the U.S. to consider

The fraught United States presidential election cycle of 2016 has revealed a country divided along geographical and ideological lines. It has also bolstered a narrative of haves and have-nots, pitting the so-called coastal elites against “heartland” America.

The U.S. Should Learn from Taiwan’s Commitment to Providing Museum Access to Rural Poor