Whats going to be in the Brooks Stevens exhibition, and why is it in an art museum?
The exhibition will have seven cars, two boats, a motorcycle, a tractor, toys, appliances, packaging, and plenty more. In many cases the objects will be shown next to hand-drawn renderings and handmade models from the Brooks Stevens Archive. These things all belong in an art museum, first of all, because they are the products of great creativity and ingenuity. Many of them are also beautiful. But most importantly, they belong in an art museum because “art” is not just something you hang on a wall-it’s anything that people make for aesthetic purposes. Stevens used aesthetics to sell products, not for its own sake, but his designs still have the things that we look for in good art: originality, style, and historical interest.
