INTRODUCTION
The 1953 Good Design exhibition, curated by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., was part of MoMA’s efforts to promote modernist design principles to a broader audience. It showcased everyday objects that combined functionality, affordability, and aesthetic appeal, reflecting the post-war consumer culture of the time.
‘Good Design’ in the context of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) during the mid-century era in New York, focusing on the exhibition of ‘purchasable household art pieces’.
As someone fascinated with mid-century design, I explored women designers’ representation in this exhibition, starting with MoMA’s open-source master checklist. Two key questions guided my research:
What product dominated the ‘Good Design’ Exhibition during the mid-century movement?
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art. Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Source: Art Resource.
How were women designers represented, and what patterns in gender distribution can be seen?
Olga Lee and her husband, Milo Baughman.Source: Esoteric Survey.
While the exhibition is widely studied, little attention has been given to the role of women designers. This project seeks to uncover their contributions and explore patterns in gender representation across product categories and price points.
REFERENCES
Several notable projects inspired my visualization approach, “Women of the Nobel Prize” by Koen Van den Eeckhout effectively uses timeline visualization to highlight gender disparities in prestigious awards.
“Women of the Nobel Prize” infographic, including the 2023 laureates. Source: Koen Van den Eeckhout.
“Georgia O’Keeffe’s Artistic Career” visualization by the O’Keeffe Museum, which provides interactive filtering by artwork type and date ranges
“Georgia O’Keeffe’s Artistic Career” visualization by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Source: O’Keeffe Museum Collections.
THE PROCESS
Data Collection
I started with MoMA’s Exhibition History Archive (Open-Source Project), from the scanned PDF of the 1953 Good Design exhibition master checklist to a .csv dataset using AI tools and additional manual verification.
Source: MoMA.org
Data Cleaning and Enrichment
Using OpenRefine, I standardized the manufacturer, added gender information, and cleaned the categories. The most challenging part was researching gender information through MoMA archives and Wikidata. I also attempted to pinpoint retailer locations by finding latitude and longitude using Python expressions inside OpenRefine. However, I excluded this data variable as the data won’t connect. I went back and forth between cleaning, enriching data, and testing visualization approaches.
Source: Author’s work.
Visualization Development
Source: The author’s work.
My visualizations evolved iteratively to address the research questions. The Initial Design revealed that tableware and textiles dominated the exhibition, answering our first question: What product dominated the ‘Good Design’ Exhibition during the mid-century movement? Peer feedback prompted me to add a heat map, which uncovered affordability patterns and highlighted the concentration of women designers in lower-priced categories. This addressed our second question: How were women designers represented, and what patterns in gender distribution can be seen across product categories and price points?
Source: Author’s work.
THE UPDATED VISUALIZATION
Enhanced Dashboard
I redesigned it with a purple palette focused on user feedback questioning why tableware and textiles dominated and how women designers fit into this pattern. I added the price matrix revealing affordability as a key factor and created space to name individual female designers. This displays data to tell a story about women designers’ contributions.
Source: Author’s work.
1. Product Category Distribution (Treemap):
- Show that tableware and textiles dominated the exhibition (58.76% of products).
- Tableware and textiles were the most prominent categories, answering our first research question.
A treemap illustrates the distribution of product categories featured in the 1952 Good Design exhibition at MoMA, highlighting the dominance of tableware and textiles.
Source: Author’s work.
2. Price-Category Matrix
- Highlight affordability patterns (45% of tableware items under $10).
- Affordability may explain why women designers concentrated on tableware and textiles, addressing our second research question.
Source: Author’s work.
3. Gender Distribution with Geographic Context
- reveals that all female designers were American, while male designers came from diverse countries.
- Highlight individual designers like Mary A. Hadley, Mary Ryan, and Edith Heath.
- Add an annotation: “This chart brings visibility to individual women designers, answering our second research question about gender representation.”
Source: Author’s work.
KEY FINDINGS
- Tableware and textiles dominated the exhibition, accounting for 58.76% of all products. This finding answers our first research question and reveals the categories defining the 1953 Good Design Exhibition.
- Women designers represented only 24% of contributors, compared to 70% for men. Their work was concentrated on tableware and textiles, categories that were also the most affordable, with 45% of tableware items priced under $10. This answers our second research question, highlighting the gender gap and the economic factors that may have influenced women’s representation.
- All female designers were American, while male designers came from diverse countries, including Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Cuba.
REFLECTION
Biases and Limitations
While the analysis answered the research questions, several biases and limitations must be acknowledged. Documentation gaps, particularly for women designers, made it challenging to capture their contributions fully. The binary gender framework also oversimplifies the complexity of collaboration, as some designs were created by teams (e.g., Olga Lee and Milo Baughman). Additionally, focusing solely on the 1953 exhibition limits the scope of our findings. Expanding the analysis to include all three Good Design exhibitions (1951, 1953, 1955) could provide a more comprehensive understanding of gender representation.
Source: MoMA.org.
Lessons Learned
This project underscored the importance of providing feedback to refine visualizations and storytelling. For example, adding the price matrix directly responded to questions about why tableware and textiles dominated the exhibition. It also revealed the economic factors that may have influenced women’s representation in the exhibition.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Connecting Designers to Their Products
To further answer our second research question, I propose integrating images of specific tableware and textile items created by women designers. For example, showcasing Edith Heath’s ceramic designs would illustrate how their work influenced mid-century modern design.
Network Graph of Design Influence
A network graph could explore connections between designers, revealing patterns of collaboration and influence. This would deepen our understanding of gender representation and answer questions like: Did women designers collaborate more frequently? Were they influenced by specific movements or mentors?
Sankey Diagram Across Exhibitions
A Sankey diagram could analyze trends across all three Good Design exhibitions (1951, 1953, 1955), connecting countries, designers, and product categories. This would address broader questions about how gender representation evolved over time and across geographic regions.
SOURCES
- Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Artistic Career.” Interactive data visualization. https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/visualization/
- MoMA. “Good Design” exhibitions series (1951, 1953, 1955)
- MoMA. “The Value of Good Design” exhibition
- MoMA. “Useful Objects in Wartime” exhibition curated by Elodie Courter Osborn
- MoMA Archives for designer profiles and exhibition documentation
- Museum of Modern Art Exhibition History Archive. “Good Design Exhibition Checklist, 1952.” MoMA Open Access Initiative.
- University of Michigan. “Interwoven” publication examining relationships in design and art history. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/ars/article/id/5201/
- Van den Eeckhout, Koen. “Women of the Nobel Prize.” Data visualization project highlighting gender disparities in prestigious awards.
- Wikidata API for designer biographical information queries