18 Artists Reconsider American Identity Through Design

Virginia may not come to mind as a hotbed of the contemporary. But the Branch Museum of Design, founded in 2015 in Richmond, is changing that, championing work that shifts perspectives. The site alone is remarkable: By John Russell Pope, the architect of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, the interiors of the 27,000-square-foot, 1919 mansion are among the finest surviving examples of Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean Revival design. The museum’s summer exhibit is also notable—and timely, during the semiquincentennial. “Americana” examines the States as a brand, how we’ve hit the mark—and how we’ve missed it. “Countries have identities just as companies do,” Kristen Cavallo, the Branch’s curator and artistic director, says.

“They make promises, cultivate symbols. America’s promise has always been unusually ambitious—it has reached, fallen short, listened, and tried again.” Pieces by 18 artists across two galleries underscore these tensions. Gallery one presents America as desirable via such items as a 3D version of the NASA “worm” logo, a site-specific collaboration with its original cocreator, nonagenarian graphic designer Richard Danne, and Paul Rousso’s large-scale sculpture of 10- and 100-dollar bills. Gallery two looks at our shortcomings, as a toile-patterned totem by Nicholas Galanin suggests. But it was all delight when an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, industrial designer Brooks Stevens’s 1956 creation, pulled up to the Branch on National Hot Dog Day.

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