Chicago Women in Design: 1930-1970

Can you name any female industrial designers from Chicago? (You’re not alone, we can't either).
BUT we’re so excited to learn more from Vicki Matranga on April 25th! Join us at Matilda in Lakeview as we learn more about Chicago Women in Design from 1930-1970.

Vicki’s talk will be a preview of the lecture she is giving at the IDSA Women in Design Deep Dive, focusing only on Chicago designers. If you aren’t able to attend the conference, this is definitely an event you don’t want to miss!

This is our second “That’s What She Said” event, a series of talks featuring different female voices in our community.

Learn more about Vicki:

Victoria Matranga has been an exhibition curator, researcher or writer for the Art Institute of Chicago,
Toledo Museum of Art, Museum of Science and Industry, Kendall College and other institutions. She
wrote America at Home: A Celebration of 20th -Century Housewares and contributed to Toledo Designs
for a Modern America, The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Everyday Modern: The Industrial Design of Alfonso
Iannelli, Art Deco Chicago: Making America Modern and other books. Specializing in Chicago’s industrial
design history, she has lectured widely and is working on a book about Chicago design 1940-1970.

She is the design history columnist for INNOVATION, the quarterly journal of the Industrial Designers
Society of America (IDSA). In 2004, the IDSA recognized Matranga for her work in educating the public
about design and for documenting the profession’s history by recording designers’ oral histories.

As Design Programs Coordinator for the International Housewares Association (IHA) since 1992, she
organizes industry education events, displays and awards programs and writes articles for IHA’s blog.
She created and manages the IHA’s student design competition, now in its 26th year.

A Chicago native, she has a BA in the history of architecture and art (University of Illinois/Chicago) and a
master in marketing (Northwestern University). She completed the Summer Intensive in Design Writing
and Research at the School of the Visual Arts. In her early career, she worked at the Glessner House for
the Chicago Architecture Foundation and was the founding manager of the ArchiCenter in 1975. She
lives in Oak Park.