February 5 - July 9, 2021
The Museum of the City of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
With this exhibition, Mumed questions a cultural revolution: that of design and new forms of modernity in the years 1960-70. This collection is therefore mainly focused on this period, echoing the emergence of the New City. Among them, a series of seats, which will be supplemented by loans from institutions and galleries, will provide the support for an exhibition targeted more specifically on the theme of the chair and its derivatives (drivers, poufs, sun loungers, etc.) in a comparative France-Italy over the period 1965-1972.The seat, and the armchair in particular, then experienced spectacular upheavals that marked both the end of a post-war design favouring functionality and the rise of a new society expressing the values of relaxation and liberation of the bodies.

A chair in the shape of a ribbon, an armchair with an elephant’s head, a sofa-waves or a seat that looks like anything…except a seat!
From the mid-1960s, the evolution of morals encouraged the design of furniture that broke with the codes of previous conventions. This exhibition unveils to the public some of the most beautiful specimens of seats in its Design collection.

