The exhibition Norman Bel Geddes: I Have Seen the Future explores the career of this polymath, who was an American stage and industrial designer, an urban planner, an ad man and promoter par excellence.

In a first collaboration with the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, the Museum of the City of New York will present Norman Bel Geddes: I Have Seen the Future, which will be on view from October 16, 2013 to February 10, 2014. It is the first major exploration of this Promethean visionary (1893-1958) who has been dubbed “the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century.”

A professional who had little academic training in the worlds he mastered, Bel Geddes had the ability to visualize trends: his designs envisioned and “packaged” the future in startling ways. Many of his designs and visions were realized, and many-equally compelling-were not. Working primarily from the 1920’s to the 1940’s, he played a pivotal role in shaping America’s image of itself as the new global innovator and world leader. His view of America’s future can be summarized by three words: streamlined, technocratic, and optimistic.

Much of what Americans take as commonplace, such as a drive on an interstate highway, a visit to a multimedia Broadway show, dinner in a sky-high revolving restaurant, or game-watching in an all-weather stadium-were innovations pioneered by Norman Bel Geddes. Bel Geddes popularized modernism for home design and, as noted above, used streamlining as his design mantra, which was demonstrated with his designs for transportation vehicles such as buses, yachts, ships, and cars.

Best known to New Yorkers is the “Futurama” exhibition at the 1939-40 World’s Fair, where 5 million visitors got the opportunity to behold a 35,000 square foot installation and leave with a pin proclaiming “I Have Seen the Future.” At a time when a national highway system was an idea, Bel Geddes’ portrayal of what would become the interstate was a feat of imagination that captured the national consciousness.

Said Susan Henshaw Jones, the Ronay Menschel Director of the City Museum, “Bel Geddes was equally comfortable in the world of fact and fantasy and that makes him a giant of 20th century design and innovation. He was a visionary and at the same time he was practical and pragmatic.”

Moreover, to Bel Geddes everything was showmanship. A key element of his genius was the ability to promote himself and his ideas, and his flair and vast design capacities landed him commissions from theater producers in his early career to Shell Oil, IBM, General Motors, and Chrysler at the height of his career.

The exhibition brings together over 200 artifacts, including drawings, models, photographs, and products. Bel Geddes was a skilled draftsman and illustrator, making beautiful drawings for the stage as well as for his later commissions.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

  • The General Motors commissioned film “To New Horizons,” which provides museum-goers with footage of what it was like to attend the “Futurama” exhibition at the 1939 -1940 New York World's Fair.
  • Giving form to his visions for the transportation systems of the future, streamlined models of an ocean liner, yacht, buses, and cars.
  • A model of the house of the future that broke from America’s traditional views of domestic architecture and was decidedly modernist; it included a garage with a revolving platform that turned the car around inside.
  • Products that would have their place in this house of the future include a chrome-plated cocktail set (1937), a pair of plastic red-white-and-blue Patriot radios (1940), streamlined seltzer bottles, and jewelry-products that targeted a chic, affluent American consumer.
  • Photographs and sketches of set designs produced for productions involving Kurt Weill and Max Reinhardt, for whom he worked on several productions. His innovations in the theater include sets that could easily be changed during the course of a show as well as multi-media stage effects.
  • Colorful drawings related to Bel Geddes’ first theatrical work done under the patronage of the oil heiress and arts patron Aline Barnsdall in Los Angeles. Through Barnsdall, Bel Geddes met Frank Lloyd Wright, who helped inspire his fascination with architecture.
  • Bel Geddes’ monumental sketches of stage sets and rare photographs of The Divine Comedy-whose production will be shown as a computer simulation-demonstrate his versatile skills for theater production.
  • A model of a television studio for NBC-here Bel Geddes engaged in a new medium, where his skill as theater designer was sought out for scene changes that were quick, easy, and economical.
  • A drawing of a Brooklyn Dodgers stadium with retractable roof demonstrated Bel Geddes’ continued involvement with new ideas for a post-war America.

Synopsis of the exhibition:

The exhibition is organized into five sections, as described below.

Mind Over Matter 1893-1916
Norman Melancton Geddes was born in 1893 in Adrian, Michigan. His father, who was often in and out of jobs, passed away when Geddes was only fifteen. This section looks at the wellsprings of his creativity and his schooling (unfinished) at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Institute of Art, as well as his first jobs. It included his marriage to Belle Sneider and the creation of his new name Norman-Bel Geddes, a moniker he kept, without the hyphen, after their separation in the mid-1920s.

Setting the Stage 1916-1927
Early in his career, Bel Geddes demonstrated he was a multitalented theatrical genius capable of directing, producing, designing shows and adapting for the American stage the principles of the so-called New Stagecraft movement in Europe. It was during this time that he developed the technique of making models to help clients visualize his ideas.

Industrious Design 1927-1937
In the late 1920s, Bel Geddes was one of the leading practitioners and founders of the new field of industrial design and popularized streamlining as a design concept in his publication Horizons (1932). He produced designs with streamlined aesthetics for products as diverse as home appliances, flying cars, and floating airports. Bel Geddes’s fame grew throughout the 1930s. His name appeared in books, exhibitions, and newspaper and magazine articles, one of which called him, the “grand master of modernism.”

A Bigger World 1937-1945
Bel Geddes later moved from designing individual products to designing complete systems, such as urban utopias and national highway plans. By 1939 he reached the pinnacle of his career with “Futurama,” a dramatic visualization of an auto-centric America, ca. 1960, at the General Motors pavilion at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.

Total Living 1945-1958
No longer at the epicenter of American industrial design after World War II, Bel Geddes nonetheless remained a visionary who was involved in virtually every field that defined Cold War America, from television to suburbia to urban renewal. A complicated figure, who was a savvy businessman and an incredible showman combined, Norman Bel Geddes looked to do nothing less than transform America through design.

Norman Bel Geddes: I Have Seen the Future is curated by Donald Albrecht, who is the Museum's Curator of Architecture and Design. Exhibition design by Cooper Joseph Studio.

The accompanying book, Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, was edited by Donald Albrecht and was published by Abrams in conjunction with the Ransom Center and the City Museum. It is comprised of an introduction by Albrecht and 17 essays by scholars at University of Texas at Austin including Jeffrey L. Meikle, Sandy Isenstadt, and Regina Lee Blaszczyk, covering such topics as Bel Geddes and the American consumer culture; homes; modernism, which Bel Geddes helped popularize, and the business of design. An essay on “Futurama” by Lawrence W. Speck, highlights the exhibition, which was a key element at the 1939-40 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. The lavishly illustrated volume contains 400 pages.

The exhibition at the City Museum was made possible by a major grant from William T. Georgis Architect. Additional support was received by STUDIOS Architecture, of which Todd DeGarmo, a Museum trustee, is CEO; Felicia Fund, Inc.; Nixon Peabody LLC, Peter Pennoyer Architects, Joyce F. Menschel, David Rago and Suzanne Perrault, Taconic Charitable Foundation, Suzanne Davis and Rolf Ohlhausen, Lee Gelber, and Jacqueline and Mortimer Sackler.

Norman Bel Geddes’ library, professional archives, and personal files were acquired in 1958 by the Harry Ransom Center with the assistance of Edgar G. Tobin Foundation. The Ransom Center holds the archives of many other prominent New Yorkers, including Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller.

Museum of the City of New York
1220 5th Ave
New York (NY) 10029 United States ‎
Tel. +1 (212) 5341672
info@mcny.org
www.mcny.org

Opening hours
Daily from 10am to 6pm

Related images

  1. Unidentified photographer, Walter Kidde Soda King Seltzer Bottles, 1939. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation / Harry Ransom Center
  2. Norman Bel Geddes, "Through the City of Tomorrow without a Stop," advertisement for Shell Oil advertising campaign, ca. 1932-1938 Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation / Harry Ransom Center
  3. Norman Bel Geddes & Co., Inc., Norman Bel Geddes with blueprints. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation / Harry Ransom Center
  4. Prototype case for Emerson Patriot radio, ca. 1940-1941. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation / Harry Ransom Center
  5. Norman Bel Geddes &Co., Inc. original artwork for poster for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, ca. 1941. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation / Harry Ransom Center
  6. "I Have Seen the Future" button, 1940. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation / Harry Ransom Center