Baldwin Kingrey window display of Mathsson furniture, 1949. Photograph by Harry Weese |
John Brunetti
Baldwin Kingrey: A Modern Mission
6pm Wednesday, March 30
Graham Foundation, 4 West Burton Place, Chicago
Watch a video of this lecture:
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Video running time is 1 hr 4 min.
The seminal modern furniture store Baldwin Kingrey was opened in 1947 in Chicago by architect Harry Weese, his wife Kitty Baldwin, and their partner Jody Kingrey. In the postwar years, the store demonstrated European functionalism's ability to provide affordable design solutions to the domestic needs of returning servicemen and their growing families. But Baldwin Kingrey was more than a retail enterprise. The store served as an informal gathering place for ambitious students and leading faculty from Chicago's influential Institute of Design, as well as the city's modern architects and interior designers, who looked for inspiration from the store's inventory of designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, Charles Eames, and Eero Saarinen, as well as its timeless housewares and exhibitions of modern art.
John Brunetti is author of Baldwin Kingrey: Midcentury Modern in Chicago, 1947-1957 (Wright, 2004). He is a Chicago art critic, educator and curator and writes catalog essays on a wide range of art for Chicago galleries and museums. Brunetti lectures on contemporary art and criticism at Columbia College, Chicago, and is a faculty member in the Art Department at Northeastern Illinois University. He is the curator for the Evanston Art Center in Evanston, Illinois. Brunetti earned a BA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA from the University of Chicago.
Copies of Baldwin Kingrey will be available for purchase after the lecture.