This article is part of a special section at the museum about how institutions are working to give visitors more to see, do and feel.
Here at the Walker Arts Center, Felice Clark sits on a sofa that looks like it crawled out of the set of Tim Burton's 1988 film 'Beetlejuice.'
The 'Lawless Sofa' by Detroit-based designer Evan Fay features a steel pipe frame wrapped in sinuous white cushions.
Across from Clark, Walker's director of business development, is Asli Altay, Walker's director of design programming. She reclines against a faux fireplace surrounded by orange carpet and surrounded by an ice-cast bronze fireplace screen designed by Chicago-based Steven Haulenbeek. It looks like a flash of a hundred roses melted together.
Clark said, “It is a store disguised as an exhibition, or an exhibition hall disguised as a store.”
“We built a house and blew the roof off.” Altai added.
This is Idea House 3, a new version of the Walker Museum gift shop that has been closed during the pandemic. Idea House 3 features modern design and contemporary art, inspired by the museum's Idea House concept from the 1940s.
The empty space in the old store now houses a new design collectibles gallery. It opened in November, a year after Altay and Clark pitched the idea. They wanted Idea House 3 to re-establish Walker as a design hub in the Midwest.
Altay, a former creative director at Apple, came to Walker from his home in Istanbul because of its historic design reputation, starting with its original director, architect Daniel S. Defenbacher.
“My mission was to have one exhibition dedicated to design and make sure it was always on display, rather than touring for years,” Aslay said. “We can contribute to the design discourse, which is still in its infancy compared to architecture or art.”
London's Zak Group helped Walker design the space to feel like home through an open floor plan. The entire house is covered with orange carpet. Aslay described it as “Home Depot” orange, a “ton-in-cheek” reference to home improvement.
Playful, avant-garde vignettes of domestic life are sprinkled throughout, including classic pieces like Frank Gehry's Wiggle Side Chair and a glossy Panton chair. But they are outnumbered by the creations of emerging Midwestern designers, such as the Ghost Garden table by Ayako Aratani (Detroit-based) and the octopus-like home objects by Daniel Shapiro (St. Louis).
Unlike a museum, admission to the store is free, and visitors can try out items commissioned by Walker for themselves.
“Part of our mission was to show people how to make a living with these types of objects,” Clark said. “When you look at a sofa like this, you might not initially understand how it will actually live in the space.”
When Clark and Altay conducted market research for Idea House 3, they couldn't find anything similar anywhere, let alone in the Midwest's museum sector. Detroit designer Aleiya Olu said the closest would be the MoMA design store at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Olu is one of about 30 designers featured in “Midwest Design Here & Now,” a “room” at Idea House 3 curated by “guest” Wava Carpenter, Design Miami’s curatorial director. Altay says special collections from guest curators rotate twice a year, with the next collection scheduled for late summer.
Olu's contributions to “Midwest Design Here & Now” include the Lyndon Table, a Walker commission; A disc made of tea-stained cherry wood on a gray velvet base in the shape of a Hershey's Kiss. The tabletop features floral cutouts, a nod to Olu's memories of her grandmother and the Arts and Crafts movement.
“It’s very practical,” Olu said.
Olu, who until recently was a publicist for contemporary art, said she had the opportunity to participate in Idea House 3, which is reminiscent of MoMA's Japanese pavilion from the 1950s. She said the design gained not only a place in museums but also exposure to other Midwestern designers.
“It’s really cool to understand what design is coming out of Chicago and what design is coming out of other parts of the Midwest,” Olu said. “I feel like Walker has always been a place for innovation, but you don’t always get that in the Midwest.”
Mary Ceruti, director of the Walker, said that because the museum was established as an arts center with a performing arts space, a theater and its own design department, it was more flexible to incorporate porous spaces like Idea House 3.
“This is about experimentation, visual culture and material reality,” Ceruti said. “It also connects Walker as a thought leader in the design space, which has historically been one.”
Altay drew inspiration for Idea House 3 from museum history. A year after opening in 1940, Walker built Idea House I, a one-story house next door, under Defenbacher's direction.
“They built real houses to showcase modern design to educate the public about the virtues of good material selection, modernism, etc.,” Altay said.
In 1946, Walker started “Everyday Art Quarterly” and the Everyday Art Gallery, another showcase of residential designs. Idea House II then opened in 1947, featuring an open floor plan and design objects such as an Isamu Noguchi coffee table, Eames furniture, and Eva Zeisel's dinnerware from the nearby Red Wing Stoneware and Pottery.
“A man’s home is his art,” Defenbacher said at the time. The original Idea House has since been demolished and daily art ceased, but its legacy now lives on in Idea House 3.
“We took our cues from two truly legendary projects,” said Altay.