Galit Marmor-Lavie is a professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication. This semester she brought students in her undergraduate Advertising and Popular Culture class, offered at the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations, to the Ransom Center’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland exhibition. Below, she explains the project that was inspired by the exhibition and what drew her to use the Ransom Center as a resource.
I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America
Now open at the Wolfsonian: “I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America”
The exhibition I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America is now open at the Wolfsonian at Florida International University in Miami Beach, Florida. Pulled mostly from the Ransom Center’s Bel Geddes archive, the exhibition originated in fall 2012 at the Ransom Center and was on view earlier this year at the Museum of the City of New York. Bringing together some 200 unique drawings, models, photographs, and films, this exhibition highlights Bel Geddes’s creativity and desire to transform American society through design.
Norman Bel Geddes (1893–1958) was an industrial and theatrical designer who gained fame in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s for his streamlined and futuristic innovations. His designs played a significant role in shaping America’s image as an innovative powerhouse and global leader into the future. One of his most famous undertakings was the unforgettable Futurama exhibition at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair.
I Have Seen the Future is on view at the Wolfsonian until September 28.
Image: Norman Bel Geddes, Motor Car No. 9 (without tail fin), ca. 1933.
Curator of Norman Bel Geddes exhibition discusses influence of the industrial designer
Donald Albrecht, exhibition organizer and curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, discusses industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes’s influence on the American landscape. Albrecht—editor of Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (Abrams)—emphasizes the breadth of the Bel Geddes collection at the Ransom Center, which includes Bel Geddes’s plans and sketches of his futurist visions.
The exhibition Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, which was on view at the Ransom Center in fall 2012, opens at the Museum of the City of New York today. To celebrate this traveling exhibition, the Ransom Center is giving away a free “I Have Seen the Future” totebag to all Ransom Center visitors, while supplies last.
