BGC Gallery

To celebrate the release of Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010 we invite you to join us for a special book signing with Irma Boom at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery.

Irma Boom is a world renowned Amsterdam-based graphic designer specializing in making books. Her commissioners include the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Paul Fentener van Vlissingen (from 1990-2006); Inside Outside; Prince Claus Fund; Fondazione Prada; Zumtobel; Ferrari; Masserati; Vitra International; NAi Publishers; United Nations; OMA/Rem Koolhaas; Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Aga Khan Foundation, Geneva. She has received numerous awards for her book designs and was the youngest laureate ever to receive the prestigious Gutenberg prize for her complete body of work.  Her books are held in the permanent collections of  The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris; and the Irma Boom Collection at the University of Amsterdam. Ms. Boom first collaborated with the Bard Graduate Center in 2006 when she designed the award-winning exhibition catalogue Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor.  She has returned to design the catalogue for our current exhibition: Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010.

Published by the BGC in collaboration with Yale University Press and edited by Earl Martin, associate curator at the BGC, Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010 provides an in-depth analysis of textiles of one of the world’s leading design companies, Knoll. The contributors include Paul Makovsky, editorial director, Metropolis magazine, on the Knoll firm before the founding of Knoll Textiles; Susan Ward, an independent textile historian on the context for modern textiles in America from the late 1930s to the early 1960s and Knoll’s key contributions during this period; Bobbye Tigerman, assistant curator of decorative arts and design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on Florence Knoll and the Knoll Planning Unit; and Angela Völker, curator emeritus of textiles at the MAK, Vienna, on Knoll Textiles from 1965 to 2010. Knoll Textiles, 1945–2010 makes a major contribution to modern design history by resurrecting the stories of over 80 designers who created textiles for Knoll from 1942 to the present in an extensive biography section, which provides previously unpublished and critical information.

Book details