EXHIBIT REVIEW: THE INAUGURAL EXHIBITION AT THE WOLFSONIAN GLENN PORTER In the heart of South Beach, the hot, partying, Art Deco district of Miami Beach, sits the Wolfsonian. It is both a museum and a re search center. Founded in 1986 by collector and Wometco Enter prises heir Mitchell Wolfson Jr., it focuses on design and the social and political meaning of objects from the last quarter of the 19th century to 1945. The institution also has a facility in Genoa, Italy, with a collection concentrating on Italian design, art, and decorative arts from the same era. The Wolfsonian has engaged in a wide range ofhigh-quality activi ties since its founding, though no one would yet mistake it for its implied analogue, the Smithsonian. It has published TheJournal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, a quarterly from 1986 through 1990, an annual since 1992. The propaganda arts, as editor PamelaJohn son defined them in the first issue, are “art in the service of an idea or an ideology.” This includes politics but is by no means limited to that. The journal is lavishly illustrated and handsomely designed and produced, like all the Wolfsonian’s publications. It offers a lively and interesting collection of scholarly articles, interviews, reviews, and special issues on design in many nations. In 1993 the Wolfsonian added a research center to promote schol arship in its areas ofspecial interest. For 1997, the center announced a variety of fellowships, including one at the American Academy in Rome and a joint one with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. At the headquarters in Florida, fellows can use a library of approxi mately forty thousand books and imprints, and twenty thousand drawings, posters, and prints, as well as the more than seventy thou sand American and European artifacts. A large storage warehouse from the 1920s has been skillfully redesigned to house the museum and research center. The building gives the institution presence, even in the visual sizzle of South Beach. Now the Wolfsonian has created its inaugural public exhibition. Entitled The Arts ofReform and Persuasion, 1885-1945, the show highDr . Porter is director of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Dela ware. His current research interests are the corporate use ofdesign and architecture.© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3802-0008J01.00 467 468 Glenn Porter lights 256 works from the impressive collections the museum over sees. It introduces the Wolfsonian to a wider world. And it is a splen did exhibition. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Chase Manhattan Private Bank, and others, the ex hibit and an associated array of lectures, conferences, films, and other programs opened in November 1995. After its Miami run, the exhibition has a breathtaking traveling schedule: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Seattle Art Museum; the Carnegie Mu seum ofArt; the Indianapolis Museum ofArt; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Palazzo Esposizioni in Rome; and the Setagaya Mu seum in Tokyo. Congratulations are clearly in order for the Wolfsonian ’s consulting curator, Wendy Kaplan, for former director Peggy Loar, and for the entire professional staff at the museum. There is an accompanying book, Designing Modernity: The Arts of Reform, and Persuasion, 1885-1945, edited and with an essay by Kaplan, best known for her work on the Arts and Crafts movement. The book is beautiful and features essays by some of the leading figures in design history, such as Jeffrey Meikle, Dennis Doordan, and John Heskett. (See the review by Christian Overland in this is sue—Ed.) The volume includes a complete checklist of the objects in the show, with illustrations in most cases. The overriding institutional objectives of the exhibition are to show the world something of the Wolfsonian’s riches and to help the museum in a challenging transition to an era in which it can stand independently of the annual support of its founder. In those terms, the show is clearly a success, as it demonstrates the enormous value of the fledgling museum. The Wolfsonian houses excellent collections and has done much good work. It now needs an endow ment and sufficient time in which...