Hasta La Ideas

Up top is the “Radio Nurse” hospital intercom designed by Isamu Noguchi, circa 1937; below it, JVC’s “VideoSphere” television set released in 1970, designer unknown. Both of these are on display, along with roughly 100 other exceptional industrial designs, at Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Philbrook Museum of Art.

While us coastal snobs often write Middle and Southern America off as a place where design isn’t appreciated, Tulsa businessman and philanthropist George R. Kravis II is countering that perception by sponsoring Philbrook’s “Better Living By Design” exhibition, putting up more than 100 objects from his personal collection to form the backbone of the museum’s industrial design collection. (Roughly 50 will actually go on display.)

“The objects we have on display span about 60 to 70 years,” [says Philbrook executive director Rand Suffolk], “and they were all items that were designed to be used–in the kitchen, in the dining room, at the office, wherever. At the same time, these items are examples of exquisite design–objects of beauty as much as objects to be used.”

…The pieces on display are “iconic,” Suffolk said, “the sort of items that the finest industrial design collections have.”

They include things such as one of Charles and Ray Eames’ molded chairs; a rare, pristine example of Russel Wright’s “Saturn” aluminum punch bowl and cups; a shortwave “Radio Nurse” intercom designed by Isamu Noguchi; art deco teapots by Paul Schreckengost; even an iPod Nano and Shuffle.

…The gallery has sections devoted to radios and phonographs, typewriters and computers, still and home movie cameras, bar accessories, glassware, clocks and kitchenware.

…”So many of these items have a timeless quality,” he said. “Some of the objects on display date back to the 1930s and yet they still look contemporary–even futuristic.”

Below is one of the few objects on display that isn’t part of Kravis’ collection: Walter Dorwin Teague’s huge “Nocturne” radio from 1936, a time when radio was still King; it was intended to be the focal point of hotel lobbies and other public spaces.

Lastly, the Philbrook has Ten Questions for George R. Kravis II up on their blog.

via tulsa world

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