"Living in a Modern Way" at LACMA

Tags:: Design

For their part in the citywide "Pacific Standard Time" exhibition, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has just opened “California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way,” which runs through March 25. One of five PST exhibitions hosted by LACMA, “Living in a Modern Way” takes its title from a quote by the Swedish-born designer Greta Magnusson Grossman, whose simple, functional and stylish pieces in the show help define the principles of the mid-century modern period. In 1951 Grossman declared that California design “is not a superimposed style, but an answer to present conditions…. It has developed out of our own preference for living in a modern way.” This sentiment is perhaps no better exemplified than within the exhibition’s unprecedented exact reassemblage of the furnishings in Charles and Ray Eames’ Case Study House #8 living room, which brings their philosophy of living—in a modern way—into a context as yet unseen outside their actual home.

— Erika Heet

For the first time, the living room of the Case Study #8 house in Pacific Palisades has been disassembled and reassembled for the public to view. Contrary to how Eames furniture is so often employed today—in a stark, utilitarian manner—in the Eames living room, their designs mingled with textiles, collectibles and memorabilia, and even the famous yellowing Nelson lamp.

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