Raymond Loewy: Designs for a Consumer Culture At the Hagley Museum and Library

Raymond Loewy was the most important industrial designer in twentieth-century America. The term of art—"industrial designer"—doesn't quite do it. Loewy's scope was greater than that: designing consumer goods, color lines, striking and effective interior spaces that were themselves works of art. He was a master of what marketing specialists now understand as "branding," the creation of distinctive, memorable, and evocative designs. Readers of Technology and Culture are likely to know him best for his signature locomotives. Glenn Porter, until recently the director of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, brings all of this into perspective in an elegant valedictory exhibition. Raymond Loewy: Designs for a Consumer Culture occupies the second floor of the Henry Clay Mill on the Hagley grounds. The exhibition's origins lie in Porter's acquisition at auction in May 2001 of important materials from Loewy's personal papers. It is complemented by a handsome catalog of the same title.