KARA
BARGMANN

The History of Design program’s 2016 Show was devised as an attempt to immerse the viewer in the experience of assembling design history, a growing and developing field which therefore remains permissive of a remarkably diverse range of interests ranging from— in the 2016 graduating class alone— contemporary silicone breast design and female agency, to the role of Indian Mughal dynasty adornment in empire building, to the selling of sex in Victorian London’s Burlington Arcade.

The show endeavors to represent the research of the graduates visually through the objects and images which inspired their research, drawing parallels between the diverse areas of interest by relating seemingly contrasting topics to one another in three groupings, People, Things, and Systems— a method of organization mirrored in the History of Design’s publication, which has worked with the show to provide a comprehensive textual and visual guidebook to the immersive process of writing the history of design.

​

Article: ShowRCA 2016: School of Humanities – Polyphony, Provocations and Bold Designs by Susannah Worth, 26 June 2016