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Contents of Case 8: 9 objects

Contemporary Furniture

The first pieces of American modernist furniture to enter the collection, in the 1940s, were several early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts Movement chairs and a table by Gustav Stickley (1858–1942). It was the Museum’s 1986 Machine Age in America exhibition, however, that focused the collecting of contemporary American furniture, and many of the objects shown here were acquired for that exhibition and in its wake.

In addition to collecting “historic” objects from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Museum actively collects handmade and machine-made furniture in current production in an effort to keep the collection relevant and up-to-date. In fact, several midcentury objects came to the Museum as new office furniture and were accessioned, or incorporated, into the Decorative Arts collection when their importance was recognized with the passage of time.

Visible Storage: Case 8, Shelf A (Contemporary Furniture)
1996.142.42 George Nelson
"Coconut" Chair, 1958

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Visible Storage: Case 8, Shelf B (Contemporary Furniture)
76.99.2a-b Russel Wright
Armchair "Statton", Designed 1950; Manufactured ca. 1951

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Visible Storage: Case 8, Shelf C (Contemporary Furniture)
83.108.1 Frank Gehry
Side Chair, "Easy Edges", Designed 1971; Manufactured ca. 1982

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1993.71.1 Frank Gehry
Chair, Power Play, Designed 1991; Manufactured 1993

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1997.187.2 Chris Lehrecke
Chair, No. 1, 1997

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Visible Storage: Case 8, Shelf D (Contemporary Furniture)
2001.37.1 Eero Saarinen
Womb Chair, Model No. 70, Designed 1947-1948, Manufactured ca. 1959

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Visible Storage: Case 8, Shelf E (Contemporary Furniture)
76.169 Frederick J Kiesler
Rocking Chair, ca. 1942

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Visible Storage: Case 8, Shelf F (Contemporary Furniture)
1989.113 Dan Johnson Studio, a Division of Arch Industries
"Gazelle" Armchair, designed 1956

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2005.5 Terence Main
"Nymph" Chair, 1992

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