Good Design mark, created by Morton and Millie Goldsholl for MoMA
TheGood Design exhibition series was an industrial design program organized by theMuseum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, in cooperation with theMerchandise Mart in Chicago, held between 1950 and 1955. No awards were granted to designers whose work was put on view in these exhibitions, despite misinformation suggesting otherwise.
The exhibition seriesGood Design was spearheaded byEdgar Kaufmann, Jr.,[1] who was then director of the Industrial Design Department of MOMA. Predecessors to this series were two other exhibition series on modernist design, including a series that began withUseful Objects Under $5 (later the maximum price climbed to $10 and eventually $100), the other a series of international design competitions.[2] An agreement to launch theGood Design exhibition series was struck betweenRene d'Harnoncourt, director of MoMA, and Wallace O. Ollman, general manager of the Merchandise Mart.[3]Good Design had five editions:
1stGood Design exhibition, held from 21 November 1950 to 28 January 1951[4][5][6]
2ndGood Design exhibition, held from 27 November 1951 to 27 January 1952[7][8]
3rdGood Design exhibition, held from 23 September to 30 November 1952[9]
4thGood Design exhibition, held from 22 September to 29 November 1953[10]
5thGood Design exhibition, held from 8 February to 20 March 1955[11]
The Museum of Modern Art developed a circularGood Design tag, designed byMorton and Millie Goldsholl of Chicago, which manufacturers of products chosen for exhibition could use in advertising and sales. CriticMichael Kimmelman of theNew York Times called this tag a "version of theGood Housekeeping Seal of Approval", and compared it to efforts of similar institutions likeV&A in the UK orBauhaus in Germany in promoting modernist design.[2]
MoMA has staged retrospective exhibitions calledWhat Was Good Design[12] (2011) andThe Value of Good Design[13] (2019).[2]
