Art Meets Design and Other Connundrums: Niels Diffrient and Michael Kimmelman in Conversation

Thursday, May 3

6:30–8:30 p.m.
forum and reception

$20 general
$15 seniors, students, and members of the American-Scandinavian Foundation

Location
Scandinavia House
58 Park Avenue, between 37th and 38th Streets

Ever since his early years with Henry Dreyfuss Associates, where he first encountered human factors engineering (now called ergonomics), Niels Diffrient has developed product designs with the primary focus of better serving the user. His designs—including office chairs, highway trucks, and computer equipment—begin with a practical understanding of the physical, psychological, and social needs of people. However, he argues, these basic human needs are sometimes overlooked when visual aesthetics outweigh practical function in the development, marketing, and exhibition of design in museums and galleries. In this lively conversation, Diffrient and Michael Kimmelman will discuss the conundrums facing designers and those who exhibit and critically evaluate design today. Seated in his chairs, the designer and art critic will also discuss Diffrient’s experiments in expanding the definition of design as an aesthetic integration of ergonomics, engineering, and appearance.

Niels Diffrient (B.F.A., Cranbrook Academy of Art) was born in Star, Mississippi, and is an internationally renowned industrial designer and innovator in ergonomic seating. He is coauthor of Humanscale, a three-volume ergonomic reference book. For Humanscale Corporation, he designed the award-winning Freedom and Liberty chairs. He holds 46 patents and has won many awards, including a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award and the Chrysler Design Award for Innovation. He is a fellow of the Industrial Design Society of America and an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry of the Royal Society of Arts, London.

Michael Kimmelman (B.A., Yale University; M.A., Harvard University) is the chief art critic of the New York Times, contributor to the New York Review of Books, and former editor at I.D. Magazine. His most recent book is The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa.

This program has been organized in association with The American-Scandinavian Foundation.


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