Design Talk | Making America Modern

Cooper Hewitt and the Art Deco Society of New York host an evening with design historian Marilyn F. Friedman, exploring her recent publication Making America Modern: Interior Design in the 1930s. Through archival images and detailed descriptions, Friedman examines the development of modernism in United States interior design highlighting the work of 50 prominent designers and architects including such luminaries as Donald Deskey, Gilbert Rohde, Joseph Urban, Eleanor LeMaire, Kem Weber. Making America Modern draws attention to the breadth of design during this period, the focus on a practical simplicity, and how this history impacts America today. Marilyn F. Friedman is a design historian whose work focuses on the development and popularization of modern design across America during the 1920s and 1930s. Born and educated in New York, Friedman studied design history at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, earning a Master of Arts degree, which led to her first publication, Selling Good Design: Promoting the Early Modern Interior (Rizzoli, 2003).