Useful Objects

Useful Objects PDF Author: Reed Gochberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197553508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Useful Objects examines the history of American museums during the nineteenth century through the eyes of visitors, writers, and collectors. Museums of this period included a wide range of objects, from botanical and zoological specimens to antiquarian artifacts and technological models. Intended to promote ?useful knowledge,? these collections generated broader discussions about how objects were selected, preserved, and classified. In guidebooks and periodicals, visitors described their experiences within museum galleries and marveled at the objects they encountered. In fiction, essays, and poems, writers embraced the imaginative possibilities represented by collections and proposed alternative systems of arrangement. These conversations interrogated many aspects of American culture, raising deep questions about how objects are interpreted--and who gets to decide their value. Combining literary criticism, the history of science, and museum studies, Useful Objects examines the dynamic and often fraught debates that emerged during a crucial period in the history of museums by drawing on a wide range of archival materials and accounts in fiction, guidebooks, and periodicals. As museums gradually transformed from encyclopedic cabinets to more specialized public institutions, many writers, including J. Hector St. John de Cr?vecoeur, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, William Wells Brown, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau, questioned who would have access to collections and the authority to interpret them. Throughout this period, they considered loss and preservation, raised concerns about the place of new ideas, and resisted increasingly fixed categories. Their reflections shaped broader debates about the scope and purpose of museums in American culture that continue to resonate today.

Useful Objects

Useful Objects PDF Author: Reed Gochberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197553508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Useful Objects examines the history of American museums during the nineteenth century through the eyes of visitors, writers, and collectors. Museums of this period included a wide range of objects, from botanical and zoological specimens to antiquarian artifacts and technological models. Intended to promote ?useful knowledge,? these collections generated broader discussions about how objects were selected, preserved, and classified. In guidebooks and periodicals, visitors described their experiences within museum galleries and marveled at the objects they encountered. In fiction, essays, and poems, writers embraced the imaginative possibilities represented by collections and proposed alternative systems of arrangement. These conversations interrogated many aspects of American culture, raising deep questions about how objects are interpreted--and who gets to decide their value. Combining literary criticism, the history of science, and museum studies, Useful Objects examines the dynamic and often fraught debates that emerged during a crucial period in the history of museums by drawing on a wide range of archival materials and accounts in fiction, guidebooks, and periodicals. As museums gradually transformed from encyclopedic cabinets to more specialized public institutions, many writers, including J. Hector St. John de Cr?vecoeur, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, William Wells Brown, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau, questioned who would have access to collections and the authority to interpret them. Throughout this period, they considered loss and preservation, raised concerns about the place of new ideas, and resisted increasingly fixed categories. Their reflections shaped broader debates about the scope and purpose of museums in American culture that continue to resonate today.

Useful Objects

Useful Objects PDF Author: Reed Gochberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197553486
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
'Useful Objects' examines the cultural history of nineteenth-century American museums through the eyes of writers, visitors, and collectors. Throughout this period, museums gradually transformed from encyclopedic cabinets to more specialized public institutions. These changes prompted wider debates about how museums determine what objects to select, preserve, and display-and who gets to decide. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials and accounts in fiction, guidebooks, and periodicals, this text shows how the challenges facing nineteenth-century museums continue to resonate in debates about their role in American culture today.

Objects of Design from the Museum of Modern Art

Objects of Design from the Museum of Modern Art PDF Author: Paola Antonelli
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art
ISBN: 9780870706967
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Table of Contents Foreword 6 Preface 7 Acknowledgments 9 Objects of Design 10 Plates 23 1 Turning Points 24 2 Machine Art 46 3 A Modern Ideal 70 4 Useful Objects 94 5 Modern Nature 122 6 Mind over Matter 150 7 Good Design 186 8 Good Design for Industry 218 9 The Object Transformed 248 Photograph Credits 283 Index 285 Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art 288.

What Things Do

What Things Do PDF Author: Peter-Paul Verbeek
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271046563
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
How are all these things affecting us? How can their role in our lives be understood? What Things Do answers these questions by focusing on how technologies mediate our actions and our perceptions of the world.

Fewer, Better Things

Fewer, Better Things PDF Author: Glenn Adamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632869640
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.

Fabrigami

Fabrigami PDF Author: Jill Stovall
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462913423
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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Book Description
Fold decorative origami objects out of cloth with this easy-to-use origami book. Fabrigami is the Asian art of folding fabrics to create three-dimensional objects ranging from the practical to the whimsical. Like paper, there are countless beautiful fabric designs to choose from, but only fabric has the virtue of being extremely durable. Fabrigami began as origami legend Florence Temko's final project. Everyone knows that origami is the art of paper folding, but Temko had begun experimenting with folding fabric to make objects that are just as beautiful but more lasting than paper. Sadly, Temko passed away before the book was completed, but her collaborator, Jill Stovall, continued their work. Now, Stovall--with the help of Scott Stern, a rising young star of origami--brings Fabrigami to print for everyone to use and enjoy. This origami book begins by presenting instructions on how to treat fabric, so it holds a shape when folded. Then Stovall shares a series of fun craft projects with simple origami-style diagrams that you can use to make a range of lovely objects. Stiffening the fabric requires some practice, but the folds are all easy enough to be considered origami-for-kids projects and are a great way to learn origami. Cloth origami projects include: Fan-tastic Fold Earrings Evening Wine Coat Florence's Hexagon Box Cloth Kimono Card Pleated Peacock

What's the Use?

What's the Use? PDF Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478007214
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In What’s the Use? Sara Ahmed continues the work she began in The Promise of Happiness and Willful Subjects by taking up a single word—in this case, use—and following it around. She shows how use became associated with life and strength in nineteenth-century biological and social thought and considers how utilitarianism offered a set of educational techniques for shaping individuals by directing them toward useful ends. Ahmed also explores how spaces become restricted to some uses and users, with specific reference to universities. She notes, however, the potential for queer use: how things can be used in ways that were not intended or by those for whom they were not intended. Ahmed posits queer use as a way of reanimating the project of diversity work as the ordinary and painstaking task of opening up institutions to those who have historically been excluded.

For the Millions

For the Millions PDF Author: A. Joan Saab
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812220692
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
An intriguing look at the changing roles of artists in modern America.

Protection of Industrial Designs of Useful Articles

Protection of Industrial Designs of Useful Articles PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Copyright infringement
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description


Partners in Design

Partners in Design PDF Author: David A. Hanks
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580934331
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The 1920s and 1930s saw the birth of modernism in the United States, a new aesthetic, based on the principles of the Bauhaus in Germany: its merging of architecture with fine and applied arts; and rational, functional design devoid of ornament and without reference to historical styles. Alfred H. Barr Jr., the then 27-year-old founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, and 23-year-old Philip Johnson, director of its architecture department, were the visionary young proponents of the modern approach. Shortly after meeting at Wellesley College, where Barr taught art history, and as Johnson finished his studies in philosophy at Harvard, they set out on a path that would transform the museum world and change the course of design in America. The Museum of Modern Art opened just over a week after the stock market crash of 1929. In the depths of the Depression, using as their laboratories both MoMA and their own apartments in New York City, Barr and Johnson experimented with new ideas in museum ideology, extending the scope beyond painting and sculpture to include architecture, photography, graphic design, furniture, industrial design, and film; with exhibitions of ordinary, machine-made objects (including ball bearings and kitchenware) elevated to art by their elegant design; and with installations in dramatically lit galleries with smooth, white walls. Partners in Design, which accompanies an exhibition opening at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in April 2016, chronicles their collaboration, placing it in the larger context of the avant-garde in New York—1930s salons where they mingled with Julien Levy, the gallerist who brought Surrealism to the United States, and Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet; their work to help Bauhaus artists like Josef and Anni Albers escape Nazi Germany—and the dissemination of their ideas across the United States through MoMA’s traveling exhibition program. Plentifully illustrated with icons of modernist design, MoMA installation views, and previously unpublished images of the Barr and Johnson apartments—domestic laboratories for modernism, and in Johnson’s case, designed and furnished by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—this fascinating study sheds new light on the introduction and success in North America of a new kind of modernism, thanks to the combined efforts of two uniquely discerning and influential individuals.