Grant Seltzer
Chief Strategy Officer
Jules Seltzer Associates, Los Angeles, California
Modernism, as a movement, is more than 80 years old. Its design heyday was in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with the world’s greatest designers: Mies van der Rohe, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Isamu Noguchi, Warren Platner, Harry Bertoia, Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjaerholm and Florence Knoll. Sales took off in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but the residential market for modernist design almost died in the ‘80s. A few diehards hung on until, in late 1994, Ray Kennedy of Herman Miller and I chatted about whether people would reconsider the “classics” again for their homes. It was a time that design was creeping into everyone’s lives, whether they knew it or not. Designer jeans, cell phones, shopping malls, fancier, larger automobiles, remodeled homes for larger families and new architect-designed homes for the affluent were in vogue. In early 1995, our joint venture, the first Herman Miller for the Home showroom, opened in Los Angeles. The resurgence gained speed when Knoll started a similar residential division, Knoll Studio. Vitra, Fritz Hansen and the Italians followed suit.

Tom Peters, business guru and futurist, predicted that the first decade of the 21st century would be “The Decade of Design.” Was he right? All you need do is look around. Design is everywhere! With new forms of technology and many young designers jumping on board, the movement is becoming populated with visionary companies such as Moroso, Paola Lenti, Moooi, Ingo Maurer, Cappellini and Tord Boontje. Furniture is becoming art, and more than ever, is being strongly tied to architecture. Indoor/outdoor living is the rage with new technology in fabrics. But look for Herman Miller, Knoll and the other originators to surge in new design concepts in the coming decade to take back the lead.


Hugh Grant
Founder, Director and Curator
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Denver, Colorado
Perhaps the most important moment for 20th-century modernism in the past 10 years was the re-opening of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in November 2004. The institution has not only been a great window to modern art — since the first director, Alfred Barr, courageously mounted exhibits that disturbed many Americans’ perception of art — but the expansion signaled the continued public interest in and support of modernism. In addition, MoMA renewed its commitment to showing painting and sculpture with decorative art, as I do at the Kirkland Museum. Other museums will begin or expand design departments and, as the public gains a greater understanding of the simultaneous developments in fine and decorative art, the design market will continue to strengthen significantly.

The greatest rediscovery of 20th-century modernism will be the increasing realization by the public that decorative art is as legitimate, original and important as fine art. When furniture and other objects by Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh started selling for large sums, decorative art acquired greater respect. As auction and dealer sales of lesser known designers continue to increase in number and value, and as museums continue to exhibit more decorative art, the public’s esteem will be expanded and enriched. At Kirkland Museum, decorative art and fine art are shown together in a salon environment. Visitors from around the world comment that it is one of the most exciting museum experiences because of the natural feeling of having painting and sculpture and decorative art “in concert” as it has been for centuries in houses.


Michael Webb
Author, Los Angeles, California
Since we are now well into the first decade of the 21st century, I think the discussion should be about “modernism,” rather than “20th-century modernism.” Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown L.A. demonstrates the power, beauty and utility of modern architecture. It enhances the urban and musical experience and it supplies an icon for a city that has always promised more than it could deliver. And it rebuts the slander that Gehry is willful and impractical.

John Lautner, who designed extraordinary houses for 60 years, mostly in southern California, is widely known only for the Chemosphere. The exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in July 2008 should persuade even
prejudiced easterners that his work deserves greater respect.