Professor Penny Sparke, Kingston University London, gives a lecture on the changing roles and meanings of plants in interior design, from the Victorian era to the Modernism and beyond, and how this has changed the way we think about the history of the ‘Modern Interior’.
Through a study that examines the changing roles and meanings of plants and flowers in both private and public indoor spaces created in the period following industrialisation and urbanisation in the western world, this talk will discuss the importance of design historians considering the ‘natural’ alongside the ‘material’ and the ‘spatial’. Tracing a narrative through from the Victorian era to that of architectural and design Modernism, Late Modernism and beyond, it will demonstrate the way in which this addition transforms the way we currently think about the history of the ‘Modern Interior’.
Penny Sparke
Professor of Design History and Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC) at Kingston University, London. Professor Sparke has taught design history at Brighton Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art where she co-founded the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum master’s course in the history of design. She has also lectured internationally, curated exhibitions, broadcast, written reviews, and published widely on the subject of the history of modern design. Her key publications include An Introduction to Design and Culture: 1900 to the present (1986); As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995); The Modern Interior (2008); and Nature Inside: Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior (2021). She was a founder member of the Design History Society and has recently stood down as chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Design History.
This is the 2021 Tessin Lecture, postponed one year due to the pandemic.
The lecture is open to the public. Admission is free.
The Tessin Lecture
Once a year the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm invites a prominent international scholar to give a lecture in art history. The lecture, which is public, is a way to pay tribute to an exceptional scholar in art history and emphasize the museum’s commitment to research.
Date: Wednesday 28 September, 17–19
Venue: The South Courtyard (SÖdra ljusgården)
Language: English
Free admission.
The image above: Interior of the Eames house, Los Angeles. Photo: Julius Shulman, 1950, the Getty Research Institute.