An exhibition at the Denver Art Museum showcases over 200 pieces with a playful spirit that were created by US-based industrial and graphic designers in the 1950s and '60s. Curator Darrin Alfred selects his highlights.
The show, Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America, presents furniture, textiles, posters, toys and other pieces created in the postwar era by more than 40 America-based designers, including Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard and Isamu Noguchi.
With over 250 pieces on view, the show is meant to reveal how designers were influenced by the notion of play, and how it was incorporated into their creative process.
"Beginning in the late 1940s, after the trauma of World War II, American designers intentionally intertwined work and play, generating designs characterized by innovation and whimsy," said Darrin Alfred, curator of architecture and design at the Denver Art Museum. "Forward-looking and optimistic, these designers believed that play was not adjacent to their process, but essential to it."

Alfred curated the show in collaboration with Monica Obniski, a design curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition was staged at the Wisconsin museum prior to arriving in Denver, where it will be on view through 25 August 2019.
The show is presented in the museum's Frederic C Hamilton Building, designed by Daniel Libeskind. A companion book features essays by writers such as design critic Alexandra Lange.
The exhibition is divided int...