The initial exhibit in the 2000-square-foot Collab Gallery for Modern and Contemporary Design will provide a chronological look at the Museum's collections of modern and contemporary decorative art, which now includes over 2500 objects ranging from appliances and furniture to ceramics, glass, and lighting.
Entitled Designing Modern: 1920 to the Present, the exhibit consists of four platforms that present benchmark examples from pivotal movements in the evolving history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century design: Art Deco and the Bauhaus (1920 to 1940), American and Scandinavian Modernism (1940 to 1960), the new Italian domestic landscape (1960 to 1980), and Postmodernism (1980 to the present).
The Collab Gallery represents a dramatic expansion in exhibition space for the collections, which had previously been shown in a 330-square-foot gallery in the Museum's main building.
The Gallery is named for the nonprofit organization of Philadelphia-area design professionals which has worked to build the Museum's modern and contemporary decorative art collections and programs.
The new Collab Gallery will enable the curators to present larger and more focused exhibitions.