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TV rooms came true. Self-cleaning kitchens didn’t. Inside LACMA’s ‘Home of the Future’
LACMA homes of the future
Installation photo from "Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias"
(
Jonathan J. Urban
/
Courtesy LACMA
)
Installation photo "Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias"
(
Jonathan J. Urban
/
Courtesy LACMA
)
Installation photo from "Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias"
(
Jonathan J. Urban
/
Courtesy LACMA
)
The exhibit:
LACMA’s new exhibit, "Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias," explores visions of how designers imagined technologies would transform life in American homes. Some of these predictions, like rooms centered around television sets, would come to pass while ideas like self-cleaning kitchens remain tantalizingly out of reach.
Why it's interesting: “For the past 30 years, I've been inspired by a quote from the historian Marshall Berman, who defined modernity as a struggle to make ourselves at home in a constantly changing world,” curator Wendy Kaplan said during a conversation on AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news show. "The reason our exhibition starts in 1925 is that you have this post-World War I optimism and also a need to apply the technologies that were developed during World War I by the military."
Don’t miss: the Kohler electric sink from 1926 on display, which promised better living through electric dishwashing but did not catch on at the time.
When to see it: The exhibit runs through March 14, 2027, in LACMA's Resnick Pavilion, located at 5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Listen to the conversation with the curator:
Listen
10:06
New LACMA exhibit looks at past visions of the future homes
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