Matt Kahn: Artist and Educator
May 8 - July 12, 2009
Curator:
Harold B. Nelson
Exhibition Design:
Ted Cohen
Matt Kahn: Artist and Educator is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design and curated by Hal Nelson. Exhibitions and related programming have been made possible by Windgate Charitable Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund, David and Sylvia Weisz Foundation, Bernard Osher Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, Michael Osborne Design, and Comerica Charitable Foundation.
A highly inventive artist as well as an immensely influential designer, Matthew “Matt” Kahn has taught at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California since 1949. His years at Stanford coincide with a richly creative period in American art, an era when American design emerged to international prominence and “Made in California” became the hallmark for excellence and innovation in contemporary design.
Instilling in his students an abiding appreciation for the central role of design in every aspect of daily life, Mat Kahn mentored several generations of Stanford students, many ofwhom went on to become leading figures in their respective fields.Among them are Mark Fuller (Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of WET Design and designer of the Bellagiofountains in Las Vegas); David Kelley (founder and CEO of IDEOdesign firm in Palo Alto); Michael Duncan, Associate Partner, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill; Harley Jessup, Industrial Light &Magic; and the preeminent fiber artist Jean Ray Laury. Laury has said of Kahn: “Mat Kahn was one of the great influences ni my life. He was an incredibly inspiring teacher; encouraging, demanding, insightful and fun!”
Throughout his years at Stanford, Kahn has produced a rich body of work in al media from painting and sculpture, to fiber, metalwork, product design, and interiors. While his work has been shown at institutions across the country from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, Kahn’s role as an innovative artist and masterful designer has never been fully acknowledged in San Francisco. Matt Kahn: Artist and Educator intends to address the oversight by surveying the career of this immensely gifted artist and designer through a selection of approximately forty of his most accomplished works.
Matt Kahn: Artist and Educator will also examine the artist’s historic significance by placing his early work within the context of Bay Area art and design of the 1950s and 1960s. For example, Kahn’s design concepts for the watershed presentation ‘Art About the House’ of 1954 will be shown beside work by several other artists and ‘designer- craftsmen’ featured in this important Eichler showcase event including textile designs and weavings by Kahn’s highly accomplished wife Lyda Kahn and ceramics by Ernie Kim and Virginia Davidson.
The exhibition will later survey Kahn’s impact on the history of design in this country by showing his innovations within the context of a representative selection of work by several of his students.
Photos courtesy of Adam Willis.
PHOTO GALLERY
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in New York in 1928, Matt Kahn studied design from 1946 to 1949 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Departing Cranbrook before completing his degree – a fact which the artist proclaims proudly (“I hold no degree. Zilch!”) – Kahn began teaching painting, drawing, sculpture, and design at Stanford University in 1949. He served as Director of the U.S. State Department’s Craft Development Program in Cambodia (1957-1958) and as a consultant (1954 – 1963) to Joseph Eichler, the developer of modernist homes in California in the 1950s and 1960s. Kahn’s design work includes interiors for homes, recreational and medical facilities, architectural products, lighting, textiles, and hardware. Throughout his long and richly productive career, Kahn has been a constant innovator and an articulate champion of good design.
