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Final days to see "I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America"

Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.

The exhibition I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America runs through January 6, 2013, and explores the life and career of American stage and industrial designer, futurist, and urban planner Norman Bel Geddes (1893–1958).

The Ransom Center Galleries are closed Mondays and on Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours until 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m.

Docent-led gallery tours are also available.

More than 300 items in the exhibition reflect the broad range of Bel Geddes’s interests and work and demonstrate how he shaped and continues to influence American culture and lifestyle. A polymath who had little academic or professional training in the areas he mastered, Bel Geddes had the ability to look at trends and the contemporary environment and envision how they could affect and alter the future.

“When you drive on an interstate highway, attend a multimedia Broadway show, dine in a sky-high revolving restaurant or watch a football game in an all-weather stadium, you owe a debt of gratitude to Norman Bel Geddes,” said exhibition organizer Donald Albrecht, an independent curator and curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York.

All but two loaned items in the exhibition come from the Norman Bel Geddes archive at the Ransom Center.

Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933. Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Photo by Pete Smith.