The Modern Interior

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Raymond Loewy and Lee Simonson, reconstruction of Loewy’s office for an exhibition
held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Contemporary Industrial Art: 1934’, New York,
1934.
was the taste of the day. The Cane Acres room set out to do just that. At
one of its exhibitions, held in 1934, instead of showing the usual domestic
period interiors, the Metropolitan Museum of Art focused on the contemporary
workspaces of well-known industrial designers of the day as a
means of educating the public about the design profession and it contribution
to modern life. Raymond Loewy and Lee Simonson recreated a
version of the former’s office as a ‘frame’ in which to display his design
skills and their wide application to boats and cars as well as interiors
themselves.
Popular films, or ‘movies’, provided another important means
through which the interior was mediated and a desire to consume stimu -
lated on a mass scale through the twentieth century. Movies were created
to entertain, distract and provide a level of fantasy and escapism from
the realities of everyday life. They offered, therefore, an ideal vehicle for