The design arts collection consists of some 7,000 objects spanning from the sixteenth century to the present. It encompasses a broad range of media, including furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, jewelry, and product design. There are three galleries in the museum showcasing installations of the collection.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century furniture is featured in one of the American Art galleries on the second floor of the museum. Selected examples of American glass, ceramics, and metalwork are also intermixed galleries with related paintings and sculpture.

There are two major galleries on the second floor of the museum focused primarily on European design from the seventeenth century to 1945. These spaces feature more than 200 objects from the permanent collection, including furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, and jewelry in a diverse range of styles including Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Gothic Revival, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco.

The design arts collection also includes a rotating gallery on the fourth floor focusing on design from 1945 to the present. The museum has, in recent years, formed an important contemporary design collection that is international in scope. This exhibition space showcases major designers and movements from this period.

Highlights of the Design Arts Collection

Manufacturer C & B Italia; Designer Pesce, Gaetano  |  UP3 chair

Manufacturer PP Møbler; Designer Wegner, Hans J.  |  The Round (PP501) armchair

Manufacturer Herman Miller Furniture Company  |  DCW (pre-production) chair

Designer Saarinen, Eliel  |  sideboard

Designer Alberto Meda  |  Light-Light chair (prototype)

 

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• Frank Gehry, Bubbles Chaise Lounge from the Experimental Edge Series, New City Editions USA, designed in 1979, produced in 1986. Constructed of thick, undulating pieces of cardboard topped with layers of cut and shaved cardboard that form a highly textural surface, the Bubbles chaise is Gehry’s most significant furniture design.

• Gaetano Pesce, UP3 Lounge Chair, C&B Italia, produced in 1969. Bearing its original stretch fabric skin over a polyurethane form, the UP3 lounge chair uses innovative materials of the era to respond to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s.

• Hans J. Wegner, The Round Armchair, MM Mobler, produced in 1949. Displaying the superior Scandinavian craftsmanship of the immediate post-war period, this wooden armchair with caned seat exemplifies the warmer side of Modernism.

Exhibitions

Many of the Museum's recent acquisitions of contemporary European design were on display in European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century, a major traveling exhibition co-organized by the IMA, which ran from March 8-June 21, 2009.