DecArts

Alexis Fair, a masters candidate in the Cooper Hewitt/Parsons program, sat down with me to talk about the Weeksville Heritage Center. Which she covered in a course on period rooms. Founded in 1838, Weeksville was the second largest free, African American community in the U.S. in the pre-Civil War era. The settlement was named for James Weeks who, along with a group of African-American investors, acquired property in the area. Weeksville was almost lost to history when urban development thr...

I interviewed Kara Nichols about Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color which starts this Friday, May 11 and runs through Jan. 13 at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC. Kara worked on this exhibition for her curatorial capstone at the Parsons/Cooper Hewitt graduate program. Saturated explores various aspects of color and how color theory can be translated into the visual applications of design. The exhibition was co-curated by Susan Brown, associate curator of textiles and...

This week JT McParlin is back on the podcast to talk about Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange (1971). As always pictures will be up on the Twitter page @DecArtsPodcast

This week JT McParlin was on the podcast, he is a Masters candidate at the Parsons Cooper Hewitt Program, and we are talking about the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). We were planning on also doing a later film by Kubrick as well, A Clockwork Orange (1971), but we ran out of time so stay tuned for that episode at a later date. As always pictures will be up on the Twitter page @DecArtsPodcast 2001: A Space Odyssey in Retrospect

Kayla Seifert (from the Contemporary Painting episode) is on the podcast this week to talk about the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book and the transformation after WWI when cookbooks began to be mass produced. As usual all images will be up on the twitter page @DecArtsPodcast Better Homes & Gardens Handyman's Book, 1957

Sylvia Ferguson (from the Henry Dreyfuss episode) is on the podcast this week to talk about entertainment, ethnography, and eugenic displays at the World’s Fair. As usual all images will be up on the twitter page @DecArtsPodcast Here are some of the links for the videos and articles discussed. National Fairground and Circus Archive, “History of Side Show Exhibitions and Acts - Research and Articles,” National Fairground and Circus Archive - The University of Sheffield. Crockett, Zachary. "T...

Sydney Friedman (from the Bersa pattern episode) is back this week to talk about the Jogbra. Which came about at a time when Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb ran in the 1966 Boston Marathon when women were not allowed to and she didn’t have a sports bra. Billie Jean King is named Sports Illustrated’s first ever Sportswoman of the Year and played Bobby Riggs in the infamous ‘Battle of the Sexes’.Here are some of the links for the videos and articles discussed. Florence Williams, “The Athletic Brasse...

The DecArts podcast is back! I am excited to start the year off with an object. Hannah Winiker comes on to talk about bandboxes. For anyone who isn’t familiar with bandboxes they are functional and decorative objects that held men’s collars and other fashion accessories. They represent a bridge between the handmade process of producing and the industrial process of manufacturing by machines that occurred in the 1800’s with the Industrial Revolution, which is around the time when the bandbox p...

This week I interview Noelle Kichura, a Masters candidate at the Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt History of Design and Curatorial program, about her proposed thesis.Here are some of the links for the videos and articles discussed.HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE ESSAY GETTY CONSERVATION TALK ON VILLA SAVOYE MARY MCLEOD LECTURE Links to publications PRIVACY AND PUBLICITY, COLOMINA CHARLOTTE PERRIAND, MCLEOD LE CORBUSIER, SBRIGLIO Also check out Gwendolyn Wright's "Domestic Architecture and Cultures of Domestici...

This week I talked to Molly Martien, a Masters Candidate at the Parsons-Cooper Hewitt program for History of Design and Curatorial Studies. She wrote a paper that she will be presenting at the MAPACA conference in November on SNCC and 1960’s design.MAPACA: https://mapaca.netSNCC LIBRARY LEGACY PROJECT: https://library.duke.edu/slpSNCC DIGITAL GATEWAY: https://snccdigital.orgSNCC LEGACY PROJECT: http://www.sncclegacyproject.orgFREEDOM RIDERS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/fr...