Totally Radical: Designing the 1980s - Part I: Curator Talk

Co-curators Dr. Jean McElvain and Colleen Pokorny highlight the objects and ideas in GMD’s exhibition “Totally Radical: Designing the 1980s”. Through a virtual tour of the exhibition, Jean and Colleen explore the diversity of design in the 1980s and provide a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring an exhibition to life. See Part II: Moderated Discussion: https://youtu.be/RhlD2JIEi3U About the Exhibition: “Totally Radical: Designing the 1980s”, which draws on all areas of GMD’s permanent collection, looks at design through the fractured lens of postmodernism. Like today, the 1980s were fertile ground for nostalgic consumerism, mixing iconic elements of our collective past with present ideals. Whether your recollection of the past sides more with luxe styles or dystopic futures, the 1980s was a highly mediated era of extremes. Ironically, the exhibition pushes against the idea that the 1980s are a highly definable decade. After all, there is nothing inherently significant about years that end in zero, yet we have a great tendency to think of decades as discreet stylistic eras. The collective memory of 1980s design might recall big hair, bright colors, Rubik’s Cubes, Atari game consoles, MTV, and Hip Hop. However, this falsely homogenizing approach forces a great diversity of issues and people into a single “zeitgeist,” thereby omitting a great diversity of issues and people. Subcultural styles that grew up during the 1960s and 70s were now commodified, thereby redu