The Context of No Context: Design in a Museum Posted on April 30, 2009 by Eric Heiman
The ReadyMade book in the SFMOMA exhibit, Innovation by Design: CCA at 100, 2007
When the work of my design studio, Volume, was included in SFMOMA’s Innovation by Design: CCA at 100 exhibition in 2007—I admit it!—the elite glow attached to the setting was a huge part of the thrill. I could now tell my parents, regardless of how much they truly comprehended what I did for a living, that my work was now in a museum. That they understood.
When I later walked some visiting relatives through the exhibition, though, something funny happened. I started to explain the ReadyMade book and then, flustered from not being able to handle the piece that was hermetically sealed behind thick glass, said, “Screw it. Let’s just do this with one of the copies for sale in the museum store downstairs.” And so my presentation continued, but amidst the shopping din and ringing of cash registers rather than the solemn, contemplative air of the upstairs gallery. Such is the conundrum of the contemporary design artifact in an art museum.
