Credit British Museum
Last week the Carnegie Museum of Art posted a tweet with an old advertisement for a 1960 Westinghouse Center Drawer Refrigerator asking,
“Have you seen one of these in your garage or in your neighbor’s basement?”
Apparently the museum of art is planning a major design exhibition in 2015, focused on Pittsburgh industrial designer Peter Muller-Munk. His work and that of the award winning design firm Peter Muller Munk & Associates, can be seen all over the world.
Back in November, Rachel Delphia, the Alan G. and Jane A. Lehman Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Carnegie Museum of Art mentioned the exhibit in aninterview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, the Pittsburgh-based Peter Muller-Munk Associates was one of the top 10 industrial design firms in the United States, but history has all but forgotten it. This project will finally attribute dozens of designs to Peter Muller-Munk for the first time: midcentury radios, tools, housewares, and appliances of all shapes and sizes. These are objects that people across the country will recognize and may even have tucked in their basements.
If you have a Westinghouse refrigerator like the one pictured above, contact Jonathan Gaugler at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
