Setting the Stage: Retail Store Design  and Display in the 20th Century

MISSIONWe are a support group of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco with the goal of advancing the appreciation of the Museums’ textile and costume collections. We are a Bay Area forum that provides lecturers, workshops, events and travel opportunities for artists, designers, aficionados and collectors of ethnic textiles, rugs, tapestries, costume, and contemporary fiber art.

Textile Arts Council

<h1>Setting the Stage: Retail Store Design </h1><h1>﻿and Display in the 20th Century </h1>Twentieth Century

Online presentation via Zoom. The presentation will be broadcast live from the Koret Auditorium at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Tickets for the in-person presentation are sold at the auditorium doors, and cost $5.A recording will be available for 14 days following the talk.Dr. Alessandra Wood will explore the exciting visual changes that took place in retail settings during the early and mid-twentieth century. Retailers worked with designers to conceive new layouts, interior design features, and merchandise display techniques to transform the shopping experience for consumers. The talk will focus on American department stores with local examples throughout and showcase illustrative imagery that will allow you to travel back in time to the golden era of department stores. Dr. Wood is a design historian with an eye towards the future. She is the author of Designed to Sell: The Evolution of Modern Merchandising and Display (Routledge, 2020), which presents an engaging account of mid-twentieth-century retail design and display in America. Alessandra received her PhD at the University of Delaware, her MA in History of Design and Decorative Arts from Parsons, The New School for Design, and her BA in History of Art from Johns Hopkins University. A lover of design history and theory, she is obsessed by applying that knowledge to understand what makes products beautiful, useful, and successful, and what inspires people to love those products. Her superpower is the ability to visit a mall once and memorize its layout. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco.

Khan’s Department Store, Oakland, CA. Image courtesy of Alessandra Wood

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Setting the Stage: Retail Store Design and Display in the 20th Century

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Setting the Stage: Retail Store Design and Display in the 20th Century

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