African-American Designers in Chicago, 1920s-1980s - Victor Margolin

Date/Time:	Tuesday, 07 Mar 2006 at 7:00 pm
Location:	Curtiss Auditorium
Cost:	Free
Contact:
Phone:	515-294-9934
Channel:	Lecture Series
Categories:	Lectures
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Victor Margolin is Professor of Design History at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of several books on design, most recently The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies (2002). He is the editor of Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism (1989) and the co-editor of Discovering Design: Exploration in Design Studies (1995) and The Idea of Design (1996).

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Margolin will deal with the history of African-American designers in the city. He will begin with Charles Dawson in the 1920s, discuss the relation to the Great Migration, then move on to talk about different kinds of discursive spaces, address the role of the Chicago Defender, then talk about some of the more successful designers: LeRoy Winbush, Tom Miller, Chuck Harrison, Gene Winslow, Herb Temple. Margolin will discuss the role of Ebony Magazine and other institutions. The main theme is the different discursive spaces--where African Americans were in control, where the spaces were negotiated, and where whites controlled the space.

Margolin is best known as a design historian and as a leading figure within the nascent field of design studies, a field he defines as "the study of design in and as culture." Margolin is the founding editor of the scholarly journal Design Issues. Inaugurated in 1983, Design Issues is the premier journal on design history, theory, and criticism in the United States.