Antiquarians and the origins of design thinking

A seminar of conversation, experiment and exploration with guests from the design world and the academic humanities, hosted by Peter Miller and Michael Shanks Fall 2014 Tuesdays 2 – 5 pm PST – first meeting 23 September What have the Humanities and Liberal Arts to do with design? How can contemporary design be made more…

why antiquaries matter

There’s a great article by Peter Miller in the current Chronicle of Higher Education on How Objects Speak – [Link] Objects loom large as other gods seem to fail. The enormous global success of Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects, which started as a radio program, no less, spinning dramatic tales of…

Revs at Pebble Beach Concours

Yesterday was the culmination of ME200 – a class at Stanford concerned with the historical significance of things. With about 30 students last term Reilly (Brennan), Jon (Feiber) David (Kelley), and I explored how cars connect with history. The objective – to judge which of the cars entered for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was…

Nobson Newtown – In Parenthesis

The great exhibition of Paul Noble’s work opened at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen at the weekend – [Link] An endlessly growing cosmopolis 14 June – 21 September 2014 This summer Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will exhibit Paul Noble’s Nobson Newtown, an ever-growing cosmopolis on which the artist has worked for eighteen years. The vast drawings…

ruins – thoughts on the aesthetic

An exhibition currently at the Tate in London is exploring British images of ruin since the 18th century. Ruin Lust, an exhibition at Tate Britain from 4 March 2014, offers a guide to the mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from the seventeenth century to the present day. The exhibition is…