Perhaps Henry Francis Du Pont would find it odd, but a new program at his Delaware home turned museum extraordinaire is focusing on the era when he collected rather that the era of his collections.
Chic it Up! Winterthur Design Conference in November will focus on the 1950’s Theater of Tradition and Technology. A brochure with a 50s theme seems almost as if it could be a promotion for the hit tv show Mad Men, set in the early 1960s. The cover shows a graphic of an automobile from an advertisement and a man in a pin-striped suite, presumably a designer, standing next to a range holding a cigarette.
The conference promises to cover a range of topics including post-war resort life, modernism and traditionalism in jewelry design, some of the major collections of the time and magazine portrayals of Hollywood homes.
Speakers at the event include Thomas Jayne, Interior Decorator, Jayne Design Group, New York City, Donald Albrecht, Independent Curator and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of the City of New York and Sam Watters, Professor, University of Southern California, Independent Consultant and Architectural Historian.
More information is available here: http://www.winterthur.org/?p=531
Urban Art & Antiques 