Wright at Home at SFO

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Wright at Home at SFO
Works by Industrial Designer Russel Wright on Display at San Francisco International Airport
 

SAN FRANCISCO –  Wright at Home: Modern Lifestyle Design 1930-1965, a new exhibition at San Francisco International Airport, explores how pioneering industrial designer Russel Wright transformed the way mid-twentieth century Americans lived their daily domestic lives through his fashionable, egalitarian wares and guidelines for “easier living.”

The more than 250 objects on view illustrate how Wright influenced, and often established middle-class America’s taste in home décor.  Following the Great Depression and World War II, the United States surfaced as one of the most powerful and affluent nations in the world, and many Americans purchased homes for the first time in newly developed suburbs. To serve this burgeoning consumer market, Wright designed dinnerware, furniture, glassware, and other accessories that were beautiful, easy to use, and reasonably priced. Wright mass-marketed all of his merchandise, and also applied his signature to many of his products and all of his advertisements. By doing so, he created one of the first designer brand names. Wright not only created stylish home furnishings, he created a new American lifestyle. In 1950, Wright and his wife, Mary, published their best-selling Guide to Easier Living, a handbook for postwar suburban household management.

Objects in the exhibition range from Wright’s early chrome-plated works, such as the horse bookend (1930), to Theme Formal and Theme Informal (1965), his last lines of dinnerware.   Also on view are pieces from the American Modern collection, one of the best-selling dinnerware lines ever produced.  Its rimless dinner plates, curvilinear forms, and subdued colors were unlike anything else available when they first appeared on store shelves in the late 1930s.  Other high-grossing products, including Wright’s Casual China, Residential plastic dinnerware, and American Modern furniture, are featured in this exhibition.

Wright at Home is on view in Terminal 3 through September, 2009. The exhibition is located post-security and accessible only to passengers ticketed through Terminal 3.

Images from the exhibition are available online at http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/about/news/pressres/exh-wright.

San Francisco Airport Museums

The San Francisco Airport Museums program was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public.  The Museum was granted initial accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1999, reaccredited in 2005, and has the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport.  Today, the San Francisco Airport Museums features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.

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