WHAT IS MODERN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN?
The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin
Vol. XIV, No. 1, Fall 1946

Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.

7.5 x 10 stapled softcover bulletin with 16 pages and 13 black and white photographs and diagrams. Includes work by Charles and Ray Eames, Eva Zeisel, Edward Wormely, William Armbruster, Dorothy Liebes, and Florence Forst. All Eames photography credited to Herbert Matter.

Excellent snapshot of the Charles Eames molded plywood furniture before Herman Miller contracted with Evans Plywood for distribution. A very unusual piece of original ephemera showcasing the most significant line of modern furniture ever produced.

Terence Riley noted that the early tastemakers at MoMA understood their job was to separate "the wheat from the chaff." Few people rose to that challenge with more vigor than Philip Johnson, the young head of the Department of Architecture and Design. Alfred Barr's insistence on including Architecture and Design as a fully functioning department within MoMA was a radical curatorial departure, which seems only obvious today.

Edgar Kaufmann Jr. (1910Ð1989) studied painting and typography in Europe before serving as an apprentice architect at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Foundation from 1933 to 1934. The Kaufmanns of Pittsburgh commissioned two of the iconic American residences of the 20th-century, Wright's Fallingwater in 1936 and then Richard Neutra's Palm Springs Desert House in 1946. Edgar Jr. joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 as director of the Industrial Design Department, a position he held until 1955. While at MoMA, he initiated the Good Design program (1950 - 1955) and was a strong proponent of uniform industrial design education standards.

A sample spread from this volume can be viewed here.

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