Organic Design in Home Furnishings

Eames and Saarinen’s furniture at the MoMA’s “Organic Design in Home Furnishings”

Design in museums have always been an important aspect of the museum-going experience. When attending a museum, you of course want to see the art on display, but in order to do that, the museum has to be set up in a way that compliments the art, whether to assist it in telling a narrative or even as simple as a way to organize traffic in exhibits.

Most museums are organized in the same way. There is an exhibit with rooms that lead into one another with art on the walls or an occasional installation in the middle of the room. One interesting instance of organization within an exhibit was seen in “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” in MoMA in 1940.

In 1940, MoMA sponsored a contest challenging designers to submit furniture, lamps, and textiles of “Organic Design,” which curator Elliot Noyes described as exemplifying “harmonious organization of the parts within the whole, according to structure, material, and purpose.” Winners would have their work exhibited in the 1941 exhibition “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” and were also awarded contracts for manufacture and distribution with major department stores, with the first day of sales timed to coincide with the exhibition’s opening.

The winners of the exhibition were Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames, who worked together as a team and won in both the chair design and living room categories.

The format of this specific exhibition was extremely interesting because it was set up not so much as an exhibition, but more of a showroom where people could walk through and shop. For example, one part of the exhibition would be dedicated to living rooms so different parts of the room were created to mimic what a living room would look like, with different elements of furniture, decor, and colors being displayed.