Immersive exhibition nods to America’s former reputations

An inside look at the Museum of Design Atlanta’s newest exhibit.

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Visiting the Museum of Design in Downtown Atlanta’s newest exhibit Make-Believe America is essentially a stroll through history. Curator Andrew J. Wulf, Ph.D. Executive Director at New Mexico History Museum, created an exhibit showcasing some of the country’s leading designers and how their work impacted the world.

In the mid-1900s, the U.S. government aspired to rule the international and cultural exhibition game on a global level, with the grandest being the World’s Fairs. Originally created as government propaganda, the idea was to reveal the American way of life in a glamorous and superior light. The end game: to hopefully diminish any and all threats of communism. The work of designers like Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Herbert Bayer, and R. Buckminster Fuller appear throughout the exhibit.
Each part of the exhibition is separated by major city, portraying each entity’s take on America at the time. Russia’s Moscow contains images and background information on the time Vice President Nixon and Soviet Premier Khrushchev walked through the exhibition together, stopping, in a model home kitchen. The photogenic evidence of this became a Cold War icon. A quote from Nixon is posted reading, “You can learn from us, and we can learn from you. There must be a free exchange. Let the people choose the kind of house, the kind of soup, the kind of ideas that they want.”
In 1964, the United States accepted Canada’s invitation to partake in Montreal’s Expo 67. Along the top of the exhibit’s wall for Montreal reads a quote by Peter Chermayeff of the Cambridge Seven Associates, “We wanted everything to be real so that you could feel the sense of that capsule returning through the upper atmosphere, see that burning bottom of Apollo. A TV screen with two chairs sits in the middle of the room, with the video Design for a Fair: The United States Pavilion at Expo 67 Montreal looping. When standing amongst the walls with pictures of Montreal plastered on them, the viewer may become nostalgic for a time they didn’t experience; an up-close look at one generations American dream.
Make-Believe America illuminates an often overlooked slice of American history through the eyes of foreign countries. Get a taste of our home’s various interpreted personalities before the run ends June 12.

Make-Believe America is on view at Museum of Design Atlanta through June 12.