"Whimsical Works: The Playful Designs of Charles and Ray Eames" Opens This Summer at the Arthur Ross Gallery
PHILADELPHIA -- "Whimsical Works: The Playful Designs of Charles and Ray Eames" will be on display July 22 through Sept. 11 at the Arthur Ross Gallery on the University of Pennsylvania campus.
The exhibition will feature toys, children's furniture, and whimsical films by Charles and Ray Eames, a lesser-known aspect of the work of this famous husband and wife design team, who introduced molded-plywood and plastic furniture to America during the 1940s.
These designs will demonstrate the Eames' playful approach to serious things and their serious approach to playful things.
"Toys are not really as innocent as they look," Charles Eames once said. "Toys and games are the preludes to serious ideas."
"Whimsical Works" will focus on six of the designers' imaginative endeavors: two of their structural building toys, The Toy and the House of Cards; their plywood children's furniture; and three short films, Tops, Toccata for Toy Trains, and Kaleidoscope Jazz Chair.
Augmenting the presentation will be photographs taken by Charles Eames and his office, from the Library of Congress, which will chronicle the history and creation of these objects.
The Arthur Ross Gallery, at 220 S. 34th Street, Philadelphia, is open
Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Exhibitions are free and open to the public.
"Whimsical Works: The Playful Designs of Charles and Ray Eames" is organized at the Arthur Ross Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania in cooperation with the Eames office by students in the Halpern-Rogath Curatorial Seminar. The seminar is supported by the Department of the History of Art as part of the Master's of Liberal Arts Program of the College of General Studies.
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