Please join us this Thursday, April 11, for a lecture on Interior Design in the 1930s – Ma

Please join us this Thursday, April 11, for a lecture on Interior Design in the 1930s – Making America Modern.

The Ryerson and Burnham Libraries and the Chicago Art Deco Society invite you to join design historian Marilyn Friedman, author of Making America Modern: Interior Design in the 1930s, for a lecture on the development of interior design in America during the 1930s as seen in exhibition displays, model homes, and private commissions.

Friedman’s book demonstrates how fifty designers embraced influences as diverse as art deco, the Bauhaus, the Viennese Secession, Shintoism, and streamlining to create a quintessentially American modern interior design using innovative construction techniques and new materials.

Prior to the lecture some collection materials, including the image shown here (a photograph of the bar in Elizabeth Arden’s penthouse at 834 5th Avenue from our Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection) will be on display in the Ryerson & Burnham reading room from 5:00 until 6:00.

This event is free with museum admission, which is free of charge for Illinois residents on Thursdays from 5:00 until 8:00.