The Good Design exhibition series was an industrial design program organized by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, in cooperation with the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, held between 1950 and 1955. No awards were granted to designers whose work was put on view in these exhibitions, despite misinformation suggesting otherwise.
The exhibition series Good Design was spearheaded by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., [1] who was then director of the Industrial Design Department of MOMA. Predecessors to this series were two other exhibition series on modernist design, including a series that began with Useful Objects Under $5 (later the maximum price climbed to $10 and eventually $100), the other a series of international design competitions. [2] An agreement to launch the Good Design exhibition series was struck between Rene d'Harnoncourt, director of MoMA, and Wallace O. Ollman, general manager of the Merchandise Mart. [3] Good Design had five editions:
The Museum of Modern Art developed a circular Good Design tag, designed by Morton and Millie Goldsholl of Chicago, which manufacturers of products chosen for exhibition could use in advertising and sales. Critic Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times called this tag a "version of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval", and compared it to efforts of similar institutions like V&A in the UK or Bauhaus in Germany in promoting modernist design. [2]
MoMA has staged retrospective exhibitions called What Was Good Design [12] (2011) and The Value of Good Design [13] (2019). [2]
The Japan Institute of Design Promotion also sponsors an annual Good Design Award which is unrelated to the American award.