Spring 1984: Collecting For The Future: New Acquisitions of Contemporary Design, an exhibition of fifteen examples of furniture and lighting of the past 15 years by leading international designers opened in the Decorative Arts Changing Exhibition Gallery on March 1 and will be on view through Sunday, June 24, 1984.
Made up mostly of commercially produced designed objects, the exhibition focuses on the wide variety of forms and styles in contemporary decorative arts. Designers from America, Switzerland, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy are represented. Works by avant-garde architects such as Mario Botta and Ettore Sottsass, Jr., as well as those of established industrial designers like David Rowland and Mario Bellini, illustrate the vitality and scope of recent design.
The Brooklyn Museum has a distinguished collection of twentieth-century decorative arts and is actively collecting in this area. Christopher Wilk, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts, stated, “Because of their nature, mass-produced objects may not be saved, treasured, and handed down from generation to generation as unique, handcrafted objects have been. It is particularly appropriate to acquire these objects now, so that the history of the recent past will be preserved for museum visitors of the future.”
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1984, 014.
