Tours

Gallery Tour: Home of the Future and The Kitchen and Its Discontents

  • Date:
  • Time: 2 PM – 3 PM
  • Location: Resnick Pavilion
  • Price: Free with museum admission
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Join a LACMA docent for a 60-minute tour of Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias and The Kitchen and Its Discontents. 

Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias

Between 1925 and 1985, Americans were offered an astonishing array of domestic utopias. Self-cleaning kitchens, plastic houses assembled in a day, push-button appliances, and desktop computers all shaped aspirations about how to live. Through architectural models, drawings, photographs, films, and objects ranging from sinks to television sets, Home of the Future traces how the American home of tomorrow was imagined, packaged, and sold—by whom, and for whom. While these visions promised abundance and technological transformation, the exhibition also asks who was excluded from that future, and who imagined radical alternatives.

The Kitchen and Its Discontents

Historically a site of women’s labor, the kitchen has also been the subject of their design research and cultural critique. The Kitchen and Its Discontents brings two influential kitchens from LACMA’s collection into conversation: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s 1926–30 kitchen for the New Frankfurt social housing program in Germany, and Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier’s 1948–50 kitchen for L’Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, France. These designers applied modern principles of efficiency and modularity to the home, with the aim of improving women’s lives. However, the reality was always more complicated, as revealed in photographs, prints, and advertisements from LACMA’s collection, which examine the everyday messes and simmering tensions in the domestic terrain, depicting the kitchen as a contested space for labor and living.

Please be aware that these tours are volunteer-led and subject to cancellation. Ask a member of our team on the day for details.

Go Metro. The D Line now brings you directly to LACMA (Wilshire/Fairfax Station). Plan your trip at Metro.net.

<p>Ralph Bartholomew Jr.,&nbsp;<em>Untitled</em>, 1960, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the Bartholomew Family, courtesy Keith de Lellis Gallery, © Estate of Ralph Bartholomew, courtesy of Keith de Lellis Gallery, digital courtesy Museum Associates/LACMA</p>

Ralph Bartholomew Jr., Untitled, 1960, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the Bartholomew Family, courtesy Keith de Lellis Gallery, © Estate of Ralph Bartholomew, courtesy of Keith de Lellis Gallery, digital courtesy Museum Associates/LACMA

All education and outreach programs organized by LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Education Fund. 

Major support is provided 

Generous additional support is provided by the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Capital Group, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund for Arts Education, Alfred E. Mann Charities, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Flora L. Thornton Foundation, U.S. Bank, and The Yabuki Family Foundation.

Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Getty.

Major support provided by Debbie and Mark Attanasio, the David Bohnett Foundation, Martha and Bruce Karsh, and the WHH Foundation. 

Generous support provided by Debra and Leon Black, Sapna and Joe Dangaran, Suzanne and Ric Kayne, and Koni and Geoff Rich.

The Kitchen and Its Discontents was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Generous support provided by Sapna and Joe Dangaran, and Suzanne and Ric Kayne. 

All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by The David & Meredith Kaplan Foundation, the Blanchard Nesbitt Family, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Julie Jaffe, Stan and Ann Kroenke, Ezra and Lauren Perlman, The Michael Silver Family, and Marietta Wu and Thomas Yamamoto, with generous annual funding from Mary and Daniel James, Bert Levy Fund, Alfred E. Mann Charities, and Kelsey Lee Offield.

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