StructureHub

One surefire way to score an exhibition of your work at a high profile art institution: (1) design household products for and license your name to the institution’s major benefactor, (2) design a new wing for the institution - primarily underwritten by and named in honor of said major benefactor, and (3) wait for your name (and your respectable designs) to recover from a severe case of commercial ubiquity at the hands of said major benefactor.

I think the jury’s decidedly still out on whether number (3) has happened yet, but then again, if the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) waited any longer to hold a Michael Graves exhibition in its Michael Graves-designed Target Wing, it would need a new excuse for doing so to replace its current one:  the 10th anniversary of the Michael Graves Design line at Target (yes, Minneapolis-headquartered Target is the exhibition’s sponsor).

From Towers to Teakettles:  Michael Graves Architecture & Design runs from this past Saturday through January 3, 2010 and (as might be expected) focuses on Graves’ extensive work designing household products, beginning with his iconic 1984 teakettle.  Graves’ extensive architecture portfolio is incidentally (and begrudgingly) profiled, thereby justifying the exhibition’s alliterative title.

Despite the shameless institution-corporate romance going on here, I really think the exhibition is interesting; I’ve always thought that Graves’ particular approach to post-Modernism (classical allusions rendered with subtle humor and sculpted from sumptuous materials) was in fact better-suited to product design.  Why?  Perhaps because as an architectural style, Graves’ works tend not to age gracefully (a common affliction of post-Modernist architecture).

However the exact same motifs rendered in household products do quite well for a couple reasons:  As a general matter for one, people seem to appreciate Graves’ use of historical motifs rendered with a modern twist in household products because they tend to associate such references with refinement and culture.

At the same time, people take less issue with the risk of such translations being fadish or prone to “dated-ness” (perhaps) because most don’t expect to keep kitchenware for 50 years (philosophical judgments are less common in household design than in architecture, too).  People may even like a tendency of going out of fashion in their household products - by the time fashions and fads end, that pot, pan, cup, or fondue set may be downright lovable because of the sentiments and memories it arouses.

Related Posts:  Neat Online Exhibition on Christopher Wren - he’s more like you than you thought & Updates: Architecture exhibitions in San Diego & Chicago

Image courtesy of stefernie