← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
MoMA Examines Revolutionary Designs
00:25:11
MoMA has organized a new exhibition which displays products from the museum's collection with unique and memorable design.
Loading summary
Transcript65 lines
- [00:00]
Alison Stewart
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [00:26]
WNYC Studios
Listener supported WNYC Studios.
- [00:38]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Guess who's coming on the show later this week. Only the most Tony Award winning actor in Broadway history, Audra McDonald. She's currently starring in Gypsy as Rose, delivering a performance the New York Times calls stupendously affecting. Audra McDonald will be my guest on Friday and later in the show. Today we are collaborating with the Moth on a storytelling event and we want to know what's your best story about something that could only have happened here. Get ready to call in and tell us your only in New York story in 60 seconds or less. That's later on in the show. Now let's get this hour started. A new show at MoMA looks at how design shapes culture and changes how we engage with the world. You'll see the original desktop Macintosh which was basically the first step towards laptops in the home. You'll see the Eames ability to bend plywood for splint and ultimately very expensive chairs. The post it note the outcome of a mistake. The show spans from the 1930s to the present day. The exhibition is called Turning Points in Design. It opened to the public on Sunday. Museum of Modern Art curator Paola Antonelli.
- [01:59]
Paola Antonelli
Hi Paola, I'm here. Hi Alison.
- [02:02]
Alison Stewart
We are so excited to have you. In fact, we put some of the designs from this show on our Instagram llofitwnyc in case anyone wanted to look. But what did you think a design needed to have needed to be to be included in this show?
- [02:17]
Paola Antonelli
Well, I bet that some of the masterpieces in the show are on your desk and that's a very important, that's a very important notion. So for an object to be in the show, it had to be an object that has had impact in the past or has it right now? From the post it note, as you mentioned to the Sony Walkman, you know the first time you could carry your music and your personal bubble with you to the Frankfurt kitchen by Greta Lihotsky that redesigned the way kitchens are completely laid out. So all of these different objects that had impacts either immediately big or small, but reverberating.
- [02:57]
Alison Stewart
What do you think all of these designs have in common what makes them.
- [03:00]
Paola Antonelli
So great that if they did not exist, the world would really miss out, you know, really, that's the only thing. It's always my litmus test. Whenever I see a great piece of design that is worthy of the design collection, before I make the last move, I close my eyes and I think, if it didn't exist, would we miss out?
- [03:20]
Alison Stewart
Listeners, we want to hear from you during this conversation. I want you to think about this. What is a design that you think had a big impact on your life, on culture as a whole? Give us a call or text us now. 2124-3396-9221-2433-9692. It could be a product you use every day or an invention that really changed how we behave and we've engaged with the world. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC when you talked about, would we miss this? Would this be missing from our lives? How can great design change our collective behavior?
- [04:02]
Paola Antonelli
You can do it in many different ways. Sometimes it's something. Just think about the Google Map pin, right? I remember when I moved to the United States and I was living in Los Angeles and the map of LA was a book that was like a few inches thick, and so I had to memorize my itinerary every single time. Right now, we tend not to mind ourselves with that because a GPS is going to tell us, right? So that's a direct impact. Or when it comes to the Post it note, you mentioned it before, I'm thinking, forget our daily life, but think of, like, workshops. Think of how it's become a way to organize thoughts in a different way. So truly, I would like people to stop and look at objects and understand deeply what kind of impact they have on our lives. Big, small, positive, negative.
- [04:51]
Alison Stewart
Yeah. Let's talk about the Post it note. Invented in the 70s and it sort of has earned a reputation like Kleenex or Band Aid. That's not actually. They're actually sticky notes. But you have the post IT note in the show. How did it come about?
- [05:05]
Paola Antonelli
It came about because One scientist at 3M in the 1960s was experimenting with like, glues. And all of a sudden he came up with this glue that was made with very, very tiny spheres and therefore would not really stick. So he thought it was not. He thought it was a failure. So he put it on the shelf. Thank God he kept it. You know, he didn't throw it out, but it was on the shelf. And a decade later, a colleague was singing in a choir and he wanted to keep the pages, you know, in the hymnal. It was a church choir, so he wanted to keep the pages and the bookmarks without letting them fall out from the hymnal. So he remembered about this non sticky, non permanent glue and he decided to try it on his own skin. And then all of a sudden it was a product. He presented it to his, you know, like his supervisors at 3M and it became the post it note. So, see, it's kind of a. It's kind of an adage that we've heard many times, almost platitude. But mistakes really should never be discounted as such.
- [06:10]
Alison Stewart
My guest is Paola Antonelli, MoMA Senior Curator and director of research and Development. We're speaking about a new MoMA exhibition, pirouette turning Points in Design. It's on view now through October 18th. I also wanted to point out to people the way that it is presented. You have. The walls are sort of red and there's curtains hanging in between each exhibit. Why did you decide to present the show this way?
- [06:36]
Paola Antonelli
Because I wanted every single object to get the stage, to get its own stage. And, you know, some of these objects are like the big pen or the M and Ms. Or the emojis. We don't usually mind them because they're so and deeply, deeply in our lives that we don't even pay attention to them anymore. I wanted people to really stop and the spotlight be on them. And also, every single object has its story narrated either through text or audio or a video. Full attention and focus.
- [07:08]
Alison Stewart
Oh, yeah, the videos are terrific.
- [07:10]
Paola Antonelli
Thank you.
- [07:11]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Carrie, calling in from downtown. Hi, Carrie. Thank you so much.
- [07:15]
Caller
Hi.
- [07:16]
Alison Stewart
Hi.
- [07:17]
Caller
Oh, thanks for having me. So, recently, my bedside lamp. I do a lot of reading in bed and my bedside lamp just conked out and I eventually got an angle poise, which is a celebrated British band of long standing. And it's. It's just beautiful. It's an architect's lamp and it's a beautiful color. It just makes me surprisingly happy every time I look at it, which I'm frankly mortified by. But it's. I reckon it was, you know, I recommend them to everyone now.
- [07:55]
Alison Stewart
Thank you so much.
- [07:56]
Paola Antonelli
That's wonderful. And you know what? The fact that it makes you happy is very important. I mean, some designs are absolutely functional. They're a matter of life or death. Okay? But in other cases, delight is as important as anything else. You know, an object that is delightful should not cost more than an object that is an aberration. You know what I'm saying? We should demand that kind of elegance and that kind of attention in the objects that surround us.
- [08:23]
Alison Stewart
Hear, hear. Let's talk to Scott from Morristown. Hi, Scott, you're on the air.
- [08:28]
Caller
Hi. Yeah, thank you for having me on. The thing that actually had the most design thing that had the most impact on my life professionally and as an individual was an Apple Macintosh computer. I was a graphic designer working in an advertising studio, and everything they were doing there was old school. They still pasted up everything and sent it out to a printer and all that sort of. And I said, I'm gonna make the leap. I bought a Mac, and my God, not only was it, you know, I was able to run an entire agency out of my own house, but as you were saying before, it made me happy you didn't have to use DOS or whatever that crazy interface was on early computers. You had to be an engineer or computer scientist to know even how to, you know, and make it do something for you.
- [09:19]
Alison Stewart
Thanks for calling, Scott. Yeah, the Macintosh.
- [09:22]
Paola Antonelli
I want to talk about that interface. Sorry, I just jump on you. I'm so Italian. I jump on you. But I wanted to say that in the exhibition, we also have the icons for the original Mackintosh that made Scott so happy. Designed by Susan Kerr. They're also in the collection.
- [09:37]
Alison Stewart
Let's see the Walker. It was miraculous for my active mom when her mobility declined. The freedom it provides is life changing. That's Jude from Fairfield county that says, I'm an avid home bread baker. And my latest favorite design is the Danish dough whisk. It's a cool. It's cool wire on a wooden handle that makes mixing flour and water together not just easy, but joyful. A useful and beautiful design. And then we got this one which will make your heart sing. Hey, wnyc. The ballpoint penned. As an artist, I think about it all the time. Panda from New Jersey, the ballpoint pen is in the exhibition.
- [10:18]
Paola Antonelli
Indeed. It's the Bic pen version. Absolutely.
- [10:21]
Alison Stewart
The best. The best selling pen in history. Why do you think that's the case?
- [10:26]
Paola Antonelli
I think it's because it really worked. You know, when Marcel Bick designed it, he used a tungsten sphere as opposed to the previous iron sphere that was used by Laszlo Biro, you know, and so that tungsten ball really made the ink flow seamlessly without, you know, those terrible knots that you sometimes have. And also he had a hole in the barrel because the pressure needed to be kept constant so that the ink would flow and a second hole so that if anybody ingested by mistake the pen, they could still be able to breathe. So it's really interesting. They think about everything.
- [11:06]
Alison Stewart
Also in this exhibit is the Monobloc chair. It's this ubiquitous chair that's also part of its controversy as well. Everybody has seen one on some terrace or backyard somewhere who developed it and what was unique about its design.
- [11:23]
Paola Antonelli
So, first of all, it's very funny that this exhibition opened at the same time as Bad Bunny.
- [11:28]
Alison Stewart
Exactly.
- [11:29]
Paola Antonelli
Dropping his.
- [11:30]
Alison Stewart
They're on the COVID of his album.
- [11:32]
Paola Antonelli
It's so funny, all these Instagram posts tagging Bad Bunny. I'm very, very flattered. The Monobloc chair had been a dream of designers throughout the 20th century. It was this idea of being able to churn out a chair made of one piece of material, pop out. And in the 1950s, it became almost feasible because there were thermoplastics that are these little pellets of plastic that you can inject in a mold with high temperature and high pressure. So you open the mold and you have the chair. But it's only in the 1970s that this became also scalable, that this became also cost effective. That's how it all started. And nobody ever really patented a chair. There was this French designer, Henri Massonet, that did a chair in the 1970s that was one of the most celebrated. But then after that, it's a family. It's a species, almost the monoblock chair. And they have invaded the world for good and for bad. I mean, in some cultures, it's cherished, and, you know, people fix it, and it's not easy to fix, but they try in others, because it is so utilitarian, it is easily discarded. People don't get attached to it. So it has become, on the one side, a symbol of real mass production and of accessibility and affordability. And on the other hand, it's also become synonymous with consumerism and almost like a symbol of landfills in the whole world.
- [13:01]
Alison Stewart
You love these two texts, which will get us to our third mention of the exhibit. This is the Ziploc Baggie. Couldn't live without another one, says Pringles, can no more broken chips. This leads us to the fully built German kitchen. And from what I read on the sheet, it says that it was designed for efficiency. How so?
- [13:23]
Paola Antonelli
Indeed, Indeed. So it was this woman architect, Greta Lihotsky, and, you know, the prototype was in Frankfurt. And, you know, after World War I, there was a big housing crisis in many different cities in German, and Frankfurt became almost the Laboratory. And Greta Lihotzky designed a kitchen that was as efficient as possible. It had a gas stove. It had sinks. It had these beautiful aluminum containers for all the different kinds of spices and produce. It had oak details so they would deal with worms and other parasites. It had linoleum on the floor. And if you see, really. If you see the drawings and the plans, it really looks like it's a. Everything is within your arm's reach. So it's really for accessibility, for efficiency, and for standardization as a way to lift everybody in society.
- [14:22]
Alison Stewart
We're talking about pirouette turning points in design. It's on View at MoMA through October 18th. I'm speaking with curator Paola Antonelli. We'd love to know what design has had a big impact on your life, on the culture as a whole. 2124-3396-9221-2433 WNYC. Let's go over to clothing the New York City, the official the Bushwick Birkin. We'll talk about the Telfar bag. You know, when he was on the show, he said to us that he wanted a bag that people could afford to buy, that everyone could afford to buy. Let's listen to Telfar.
- [15:03]
WNYC Studios
I mean, for me growing up, basically, like, the clothes that I wanted didn't exist, so I basically had to make them. It's like, I've always been attracting that, you know, are in women's wardrobes. And, you know, it's like I wanted a shirt that was a crop top, but I wasn't allowed to buy it because it was in the women's section, you know. So when I started to make clothes that fit how I wanted to dress, I just didn't put a gender on it. And that's always how I, like, proceeded with my career and what I wanted to make, because it's like, it's for a person that's like me, you know, and a person that really just wears what they think looks good on them, rather than trying to explain where they got it from, or the women's or the men's section or, like, in between, or I'm wearing, you know, like. And it's always fine for a woman to wear a man's. A man's piece, but it's not okay in the opposite way. So it's like, really, like, I wanted that freedom to exist for my customer.
- [15:56]
Alison Stewart
What's unusual about the Telfar bag?
- [15:59]
Paola Antonelli
Telfar's motto, which really resonates with me, is this is not for you. It's for everyone. So it's this idea of making these bags available to everybody. I mean, there's a little bit of struggle. You have to wait for the drop, and then you have to get the color that you want. There's a secondary market, so it has all the implications of luxury bags, but it's affordable. And I really love this concept. I love the fact that there's a playfulness and a sense of passion and without any jadedness about it. So we acquired for the collection the big size tan bag because it's the first one that really went on the Runway. But of course, right now there are so many different colors. And I saw that Telfar also opened a store across the street from my house, which is very funny. And it has other colors that I had never seen before. And it's become an object of desire for myself, too, but I'm just controlling my own impulses.
- [16:57]
Alison Stewart
How about Crocs?
- [16:58]
Paola Antonelli
Crocs is really. Crocs is fascinating. First of all, I have to say it's one of the best original videos that we made. And Sarah Cohen is the video maker at the moment. She does a fabulous job. So Crocs are fascinating because they're at the same time super ugly. I mean, they've been considered some of the ugliest or the ugliest shoes ever produced in the world, but also utilitarian. And also, even though they're relatively young, they've already had quite a few different, like, parts of life. You know, they, at some point, everybody hated them. There was in I hate Crocs was a tag, and people would cut Crocs online. And then instead it had a second life when, you know, different celebrities, you know, like Questlove wore them and then collaborations with Balenciaga. So it remains at the same time super ugly, but also incredibly attractive by those that consider ugliness not the contrary of beauty, but rather another possibility for formal expression.
- [18:01]
Alison Stewart
Let's take some more calls. Let's talk to David from Manhattan. Hi, David. Thank you so much for calling in.
- [18:09]
Caller
Hi, listen, I'm a designer, background in architecture. I'm also an artist and cabinet maker. And I think that for me, the basic element is the paperclip, the glorious paper clip, the way it's just a simple piece of wire bent in a certain way, understanding the idea of friction and coherence. And they're used for many different things. If you ever have to get into your phone or computer, you can bend it and get that little diameter wire in there. And the other thing in that Realm is the spring clothespin. Those two things show to me a basic understanding of design and functionality. And I hope there is a separate section honoring the paperclip.
- [19:07]
Alison Stewart
Thank you so much for calling, David. Let's talk to Jackie. Hi, Jackie. Thank you so much for calling all of it. You're on the air.
- [19:15]
Caller
Hi. So I just want to say I'm not the most boring person in the world, but for me it's electric toothbrush.
- [19:23]
Alison Stewart
The electric toothbrush. Why is that?
- [19:27]
Caller
I'm just for the very obvious reasons of cleanliness. Slack. God, I sound so boring. Slack. And also brightness and whiteness.
- [19:39]
Alison Stewart
You sound okay to me. Thank you for calling it all, please.
- [19:45]
Paola Antonelli
I agree with all of you.
- [19:47]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk to John. Hi, John. Thank you so much for calling all of it.
- [19:51]
Caller
Hi. Thank you. For me, the product that amazes me are the little ring seals on milk and juice containers. You open, you put your finger in the little top ring and you pull out. It's a plastic device and it's just beautiful.
- [20:12]
Alison Stewart
Well, thank you for that tip. My guest is Paola Antonelli. We're talking about MoMA's new exhibition Pirouette Turning Points in Design. I wanted to ask you about M&MS.
- [20:25]
Paola Antonelli
M&MS. Are really a fun and interesting also example. So M and Ms. Were designed at first by Forest Mars. Forest Marsh is the first M in M&Ms. The second M is William Murray. And Forest Mars is like the Mars bars instead. William Murray was the president of Hershey Chocolate. So really we have this kind of like chocolate aristocracy here. But what happened is that Forest Mars was in Spain during the Civil War. So 1936, 39, more or less. And there he saw the soldiers that were having in their rations small chocolates that were covered with hard sugar coating that prevented them from melting. So when he came back to the United States, he made his own chocolate pellet prototype. And then he brought the idea to Hershey Chocolate Corporation. So in the partnership, Hershey would give the chocolate and instead Mars would produce them and distribute them. And so his design was patented then in 1941. And originally, the chocolates were packaged in cardboard tubes just like the Spanish one, and were available only to the military during the war. And then they became the sensation that we know today.
- [21:40]
Alison Stewart
One of the turn of the. One of the most important exhibits is on the emoji because that really fundamentally has changed the way we communicate.
- [21:50]
Paola Antonelli
Yeah, it's so important. Emojis are incredibly important. So the set that is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art is the original one from 1998, 1999, that was produced by this Japanese designer, Shigetaka Kurita, that was working for a Japanese telecom company, NTT dok. And the company wanted to communicate with its customers, so wanted to have this kind of like, easy way to say what the weather was going to be like, or, you know, sending illustrations of pictograms, like heart symbol, facial expressions. So Kurita was working on what was available at that time, which was a 12 by 12 pixel grid. So imagine having this like squares and having 12 by 12 squares. But if you look at the original set of 176 emojis, and right now there's more than 3,900 available, not 3,700. I apologize. If you look at those 176, they still pretty much contain our world. You know, it's quite interesting because, I mean, we can never be finished with emojis. Right. I'm sure that even though there are 3,700, we still are missing the one that we really want. But at that time, it already was very concisely complete, the whole series. And they really changed the way we communicate, have added nuance. They have. You know, there's also Moby Dick that is all translated in emojis, I'm sure, you know, so it's another type of language that is at the same time exquisitely contemporary, but also ancient because you can also think of like ideograms and pictograms that go back in the. In the history of times. So very important turning point, not only in design, but in the world.
- [23:38]
Alison Stewart
Love this text. The tampon.
- [23:41]
Paola Antonelli
Mm. Well, the tampon also. Yeah, absolutely. So true.
- [23:46]
Alison Stewart
There are so many exhibits that you can see throughout this whole exhibition, I should say. But the one I want to finish with is the I Heart New York logo conceived by Milton Glaser. And you include one of the original sketch designs on an envelope.
- [24:02]
Paola Antonelli
Yeah. Milton was larger than life, taller than the Empire State Building, and just the most passionate New Yorker you can imagine. And it all happened in the 1970s, when the governor of New York, the city was in dire straits. There was crime that was rampant. There was a sanitation workers strike. So everything was going the wrong way. Tourists were not coming anymore. And the governor was desperate. So he tasked Mary Lawrence Wells, who's this wonderful advertising executive woman that recently died, tasked her with a campaign. And Mary and her team spoke about it with Milton. And Milton, so goes the legend, just sketched this I heart and why on this piece of paper. And he gave it to me. So whatever the story, the legend is, that's it. That's the piece of paper that I Heart New York was born on. And of course, you know, right now it's been imitated all over the world. It has been for a while. It was completely free to be used by everybody. Then the state of New York started to, like, put some brakes on it. But it still is one of the most recognizable, imitated and universal symbols in the world. Logos in the world.
- [25:29]
Alison Stewart
You should go see Pirouette Turning Points in Design at moma. I've been speaking with Paola Antonelli. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [25:37]
Paola Antonelli
Paola thank you for having me. Alison.
- [25:44]
Alison Stewart
Here's a way you can support WNYC in our centennial year. Donate your used car. We'll turn your old car into the news and conversation that we've been serving to the community for over 100 years. Many listeners have already donated their cars to WNYC. It's an easy way to support the state and you'll get a tax deduction. Learn more@wnyc.org car I'm Ira Flayto, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, Climate change. Genetic engineering. Childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship. Wnyc. Org.