About Face: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture

Glenn Adamson

Jennifer Jankauskas

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts

Boxes, cabinets, chests, cupboards, desks, and sideboards—this volume showcases one-of-a-kind and limited-edition pieces designed and constructed by today’s emerging and established furniture makers and artists. This exhibition catalog illustrates the many ways in which thirty-seven contemporary artists approach case furniture, a traditional form that is being constantly defined and redefined. This simultaneously utilitarian and aesthetic art form permits artists, from traditional to avant-garde, to express their own visions. Essayists and guest curators for the exhibition, Thomas Loeser and Virginia T. Boyd, present the artist's and scholar’s perspectives on contemporary decorative arts and discuss the themes underlying the exhibition. An overview of the development of studio furniture over the past decade by decorative arts scholar Glenn Adamson provides a recent historical context for the pieces in the exhibition. Distributed for the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Contemporary Studio Case Furniture: The Inside Story

Arts & Photography

Virginia T. Boyd

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Elvehjem Museum of Art

The chair holds an enduring fascination as the ultimate design challenge. Artists, craftspeople, designers, and architects have relentlessly sought the perfect solution: an ideal chair blending ergonomic, aesthetic, and material considerations - all in the hope of enticing us to sit. Never one to shy from challenges, Garry Knox Bennett has for more than 30 years been one of America's most important and influential furniture makers. This full color, 96 page catalogue is a beautiful companion to the exhibition Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker , which debuted at the Bellevue Arts Museum, and featured 52 chairs which exemplify Bennett's boisterous bravado and professed disdain for validated technical and artistic practices. The works in Call Me Chairmaker also reveal the essence of Bennett's artistic personality and his passion for pursuing the many possibilities the chair presents. Inspired by past and present famous architects and designers of chairs, Bennett lets his raucous humor, sly wit, and visual puns dance with full abandonment. His free-spirited, irreverent oeuvre forsakes not only conventional principles of art and design but, even more, the canons of furniture craftsmanship. 
Includes essays by Deputy Head of Research from Victoria and Albert Museum, Glenn Adamson, art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto, and independent art critic and curator Matthew Kangas. Also included is an interview with Garry Knox Bennett conducted by curator Stefano Catalani.

Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker

Arthur C. Danto

Stefano Catalani

Michael Monroe

Matthew Kangas

Garry Knox Bennett

Bellevue Arts Museum

FROM THE PUBLISHER: "Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World" is a long overdue introduction to the work of visionary industrial designer Brooks Stevens (1911-1995). Believing that an industrial designer "should be a businessman, an engineer, and a stylist, in that order," Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful designs for industrial and household products-including a clothes dryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. ("There's nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener," he explained.) He invented a precursor to the SUV by turning a Jeep into a station wagon after World War II, and streamlined steam irons so that they resembled aircraft. It was Brooks Stevens who, in 1954, coined the phrase "planned obsolescence," defining it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." This concept has since been blamed for everything from toasters that stop working to today's throwaway culture, but Stevens was simply recognizing the intentionally ephemeral nature of a designer's work. Asked once to name his favorite design, he replied, "none, because every one would have to be restudied for the tastes of tomorrow." This book, which accompanies an exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum (the repository for Stevens's papers), includes 250 illustrations of designs by Stevens and his firm, many in color. Glenn Adamson, exhibition curator, contributes detailed studies of individual designs. John Heskett, Kristina Wilson, and Jody Clowes contribute interpretive essays. Also included are a description of the Brooks Stevens Archive and several key writings by Brooks Stevens.

Industrial Strength Design: How Brook Stevens Shaped Your World

MIlwaukee Art Museum and MIT

Peter Callas: An Enduring Legacy

Peter Callas

Glen Brown

Peter Callas Studio

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Books by Glenn Adamson