Silver to Steel: The Modern Designs of Peter Muller-Munk
Accompanying the first monographic museum exhibition of his life and work, this catalogue situates Peter Muller-Munk (1904–1967), a German-American émigré, as one of the most influential designers of his generation. It presents the untold story of his meteoric rise as a silversmith of luxury objects in New York, to a professorship in the first industrial design baccalaureate program in America at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, to his establishment of a prominent American design consultancy: Peter Muller-Munk Associates (PMMA). Alongside Muller-Munk’s well-known Normandie Pitcher and the Waring Blendor are his revelatory designs for products such as cameras, radios, power tools, and refrigerators, as well as total environments for gas stations, international expositions, and mass-transit vehicles, for prestigious clients that included Bell & Howell, Westinghouse, US Steel, Texaco, and Schick.
2015; hardcover; 9 × 11 inches; 208 pages with 171 illustrations; available from the CMOA Store and DelMonico Books/Prestel; ISBN 978-3-7913-5463-7
Shannon Ebner: Auto Body Collision
Using photography as a language, Shannon Ebner (born 1971) examines the signs, symbols, letters, words and graphical icons we encounter in the world. Auto Body Collision documents Ebner’s most recent ongoing project. Since 2014, Ebner has been collecting language taken from signs, seeking out repetitions of terms such as “Auto Body Collision” and “Automotive.” In dissecting found language and coupling it with her own, she establishes connections between the terms “auto,” “body,” “motive” and “collision.” The themes of Ebner’s new work include the circulatory and the network, performance and its relationship to the body, and collision, in terms both literal and conceptual.
Auto Body Collision, designed in collaboration with the artist, includes more than 150 never-before-published photographs, as well as essays by Alex Klein, Tina Kukielski, and Mark Owens.
This publication is a commission of Orphaned Images, a project within Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hillman Photography Initiative, curated by Tina Kukielski and Alex Klein.
2015; softcover; 272 pages with 176 color and black-and-white illustrations; available from the CMOA Store and Distributed Art Publishers; ISBN 978-0-88039-057-6