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I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America

Presented by Harry Ransom Center at Harry Ransom Center

September 11, 2012-January 6, 2013

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 Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) was an innovative stage and industrial designer, futurist, and urban planner who, more than any designer of his era, created and promoted a dynamic vision of the future—streamlined, technocratic, and optimistic. Geddes popularized this vision through drawings, models, and photographs of spectacular vehicles, buildings, and products featured in his books Horizons and Magic Motorways. His most notable effort was his Futurama display for the General Motors "Highways and Horizons" exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, which adopted the motto "I Have Seen the Future." Futurama's giant model of a 1960 future American city gave Depression-era Americans genuine hope for a better future within their lifetimes.

The exhibition will explore the career of this complex and influential man through approximately fifty projects from the Ransom Center's Bel Geddes collection. The exhibition will bring together never-before-exhibited drawings, models, photographs, and films.

The exhibition is being organized by Donald Albrecht, the Museum of the City of New York's Curator of Architecture and Design and an independent curator, with planning support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Marlene Nathan Myerson Family Foundation, Janet and Jack Roberts, and an FAIC/Tru Vue Optium® Conservation Grant.