Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, December 6, 2004 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Glenn Adamson

"Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World"

ABSTRACT -- Brooks Stevens (1911-1995) was a noted industrial designer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was responsible for such American icons as the Miller Brewery logo, the Willys Jeepster automobile, and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Equally famous was his notion of "planned obsolescence," which guided his own work as a designer and has been one of the flash points of debate about consumerism since. In this lecture, Glenn Adamson will provide an overview of Stevens' work and life, and consider some of the ramifications that his optimistic Cold War designs have for us today.

SPEAKER -- Glenn Adamson is Curator at the Chipstone Foundation, a local private organization that supports scholarship in American decorative arts. In that capacity, he acts as an adjunct curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum and also teaches in the art history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a PhD in art history from Yale University, and writes widely on the decorative arts; his essays have appeared in such publications as Furniture Studio, American Furniture, Ceramics in America, and American Craft, and in exhibition catalogs for the Racine Art Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Mint Museum of Craft & Design, and other museums.