Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s

Exhibit Reviews The American public increasingly receives its history from images. [...]it is incumbent upon public historians to understand the strategies by which images and artifacts convey history in exhibits and to encourage a conversation about language and methodology among the diverse cultural workers who create, use, and review these productions. The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. is hosting an exhibition exploring how the dominant corporations of the period wed modern function and form to project a bright, almost utopian picture of future American life. Designed by George Fred Keck, the House of Tomorrow Living Room featured modern furniture designed by Gilbert Rohde for the Herman Miller Furniture Company. For those who want to move beyond the bounds of the physical exhibition, the museum has created a blog filled with video postings by docents and curators, which provides more in-depth analysis of the objects displayed at the museum (see http://designingtomorrow.wordpress.com/).