Museum of Design Atlanta
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Located at 1315 Peachtree Street in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
,
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
, United States, "MODA is the only
museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
in the Southeast devoted exclusively to the study and celebration of all things design."


Overview

The Museum examines how design affects people's daily lives through exhibitions,
K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993, well known worldwide mainly for its heavyweight division fights and Grand Prix tournaments. In January 2012, K-1 Global Holdings Limited, a company registered in Hong Kong, acquired ...
educational outreach, and adult programming. MODA regularly features exhibitions on architecture, industrial and product design, interiors and furniture, graphics, fashion and more. The museum is located on
Peachtree Street Peachtree Street is one of several major streets running through the city of Atlanta. Beginning at Five Points (Atlanta), Five Points in downtown Atlanta, it runs North through Midtown Atlanta, Midtown; a few blocks after entering into Buckhead ...
, across from the
High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
, in Midtown.


History

MODA first opened in 1989 as the Atlanta International Museum of Art & Design, and was located in the
Peachtree Center Peachtree Center is a district located in Downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the structures that make up the district were designed by Atlanta architect John C. Portman, Jr. A defining feature of the Peachtree Center is a network of enclosed ped ...
district of
Downtown Atlanta Downtown Atlanta is the central business district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The larger of the city's two other commercial districts ( Midtown and Buckhead), it is the location of many corporate and regional headquarters; city, county, s ...
. In 2003, after receiving a series of local grants, the group rebranded and refocused itself as a design museum, launching a critically lauded run of exhibits on subjects such as
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
virtuoso
Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which ''The New York Times'' have called some of the most im ...
,
Japanese architecture has been typified by wooden structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. Sliding doors (''fusuma'') and other traditional partitions were used in place of walls, allowing the internal configuration of a space to ...
, and ladies handbag design. In 2011, MODA opened at its present location in Midtown Atlanta at the corner of 16th Street and Peachtree Street on the ground floor (and former parking garage) of a building restored by the architectural firm
Perkins+Will Perkins&Will is a global design practice founded in 1935. Since 1986, the group has been a subsidiary of Lebanon-based Dar Al-Handasah (Arabic: دار الهندسة). Phil Harrison has been the firm's CEO since 2006. History The firm was establ ...
. While the upper floors house Perkins+Will and the Peachtree Branch of the Atlanta Public Library, the Museum occupies of street-level space in the building that is
LEED Platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction ...
certified — the highest environmental rating awarded by the
U.S. Green Building Council The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), co-founded by Mike Italiano, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi in 1993, is a private 501(c)3, membership-based non-profit organization that promotes sustainability in building design, construction, and op ...
. On December 31, 2012, Brenda Galina left as executive director. In early January 2013, the Board of Directors appointed Dr. Laura Flusche, Ph.D. as the new executive director.


Exhibitions

The first exhibit at the Museum's new Midtown location was ''Passione Italiana: Design of the Italian Motorcycle''. Curated by Joe Remling of ai3, Inc., the exhibition presented a dozen Italian motorcycle designs spanning the last five decades with designs by
MV Agusta MV Agusta (, full name: MV AGUSTA Motor S.p.A., original name: Meccanica Verghera Agusta or MV) is a motorcycle manufacturer founded by Count Domenico Agusta on 19 January 1945 as one of the branches of the Agusta aircraft company near Milan in ...
,
Ducati Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. () is the motorcycle-manufacturing division of Italian company Ducati, headquartered in Bologna, Italy. The company is directly owned by Italian automotive manufacturer Lamborghini, whose German parent company is Au ...
,
Bimota Bimota is an Italian manufacturer of custom and production motorcycles. It was founded in 1973 in Rimini by Valerio Bianchi, Giuseppe Morri, and Massimo Tamburini. The company name is a portmanteau derived from the first two letters of each of th ...
, and Moto-Morini. Other 2011 exhibitions included ''WaterDream'', a survey of the history of bathroom design, followed by a retrospective of a quarter-century of international AIDS posters. 2012 exhibitions included Emerging Voices 11, an exhibition dedicated to celebrating the work and talent of Atlanta's young architecture community. This was done in partnership with AIA Atlanta and the Young Architects Forum Atlanta. Following that exhibit was Stories in Form: Chair Design by the Portfolio Center. The works featured in Stories in Form were created as part of the Portfolio Center's course "Modernism: History, Criticism and Theory", which explores design history as a catalyst for new design ideas. While learning about Modernism, the history of design and the development of critical thinking skills, students in the course create chairs by means of a design process that combines inspiration from a historical period with personal experience. In addition to demonstrating the step-by-step design process that brings these chairs into being, the exhibition highlighted the ways in which design objects tell stories of design history and personal experience. Another exhibit was Skate It or Hang It!? The Evolution of Skateboard Art. The exhibition, curated by W. Todd Vaught, examined the visual aspects skateboarding, a sport important to contemporary youth culture since the 1970s, by presenting a broad range of styles, imagery, and visual expression in skateboard art. With a broad focus on skateboard graphics—in particular the styles and methods used to embellish skateboard decks—the exhibition appealed to a broad range of skateboarders, designers, artists and to Atlanta's youth in general. Beginning 2013 was The South's Next Wave: Design Challenge. This was presented as part exhibition, part competition; pairing designers of interior spaces with object designers to create imaginative vignettes throughout the museum. The exhibit was curated by David Goodrowe and Tim Hobby, co-founders of the failed design firm Goodrowe/Hobby which later declared bankruptcy.https://www.indexee.com/ga/1648818-goodrowe-hobby-llc Other exhibits at the museum have focused on alternative voices in game design, the work of architect
Eero Saarinen Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the General Motors ...
, the work of designer
Paul Rand Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum; August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ...
, the design of everyday things, designing for social impact and other topics.


Museum space

The exhibit space at MODA is in two main galleries with clean, industrial lines and concrete floors. The front desk area can double as a reception space and the back gallery has a vaulted ceiling with windows stretching up two stories. The museum has a built-in A/V system with ceiling-mounted digital projectors, track lighting that can switch on via motion detector, and banks of security cameras.


See also

*
High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
* SCAD-Atlanta


References


External links


Museum of Design Atlanta website
{{authority control Museums in Atlanta Art museums and galleries in Georgia (U.S. state) Architecture museums in the United States Design museums in the United States Midtown Atlanta
Museum of Design Atlanta Located at 1315 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, "MODA is the only museum in the Southeast devoted exclusively to the study and celebration of all things design." Overview The Museum examines how design affects people's dail ...
Art museums established in 1993