CfP #18: Italy: the New Domestic Landscape. The first half century
2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the most ambitious—even in the quantitative sense—exhibition on Italian design ever organized: Italy: The New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and Problems of Italian Design. Curated by the Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz, the show was held at New York’s MoMA between May and September 1972.
The details of the show are well documented both in the press coverage and collective memory. 160 objects and fourteen environments (eleven commissioned; the other three the outcome of a competition for young designers). The objects were selected by Ambasz and the other MoMA curators with economic and organizational support provided by the Italian Institute for Foreign Commerce and by numerous technical sponsors to the tune of $1.5 million U.S. dollars: at that time, the largest sum ever dedicated to a MoMA show.
The response to the exhibition was uniformly favorable among audience members or critics, drawing headlines like MoMa Mia, That’s Some Show.
Over the past half century, scholarship on the exhibition has focused on the environments (where the radical ambitions of the period are palpable), exceptional works by major figures (Sottsass, Aulenti, Bellini, Rosselli…), and on the exploration of the critical and political dimensions of projects openly engaged in a critique of the consumer economy.
The special issue of AIS/design Journal invites scholars in the fields of design, architecture, communications, and production history to approach this epochal exhibition from less familiar vantage points such as:
- critical writings published in accompanying publications, the Italian and international press (both general and specialized), and, naturally, the exhibition catalog itself.
- the role of the companies involved in the realization and support of the show.
- the juxtaposition of exhibition sections and taxonomies, read from the standpoint of the show’s protagonists.
- the show’s articulation of a structured approach to design practice, examined against the backdrop of period debates in Italy.
Ambasz’s ambitions were immodest. He sought not only to provide a comprehensive reconstruction of design’s “Italian Job” but to strategically position Italian design with rigor and originality within a broader global context.
