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Dr. Bess Williamson

Historian of design and culture

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Teaching the Century of Progress Fair along w Christina Cogdell's Eugenic Design today. Thinking about the diffusion of racial and "scientific" biological categories in public displays and commercial products in the 1930s. I'm realizing more and more that the popularization of evolutionary science helped produce an idea of both medicine and technology as "magical." Images: Glowing yellow Walgreen Drugs pavilion. Ripley's odditorium & Chrysler Pavilion on the same page of a trade magazine. Illustration of the fair including the Gorilla Show, (naked) Miss America, and Midget Village. General Electric Pavilion with "House of Magic" sign at entrance. #WorldsFairs #CenturyOfProgress #DesignHistory #Eugenics
Kind of extremely into the medical model chic of the UIC School of Rehabilitation building. & Especially its inhabitation by the top PhD program in Disability Studies. #DisabilityStudies #RivaLehrer #ADA25
George RR Martin (w Scott Simon 🙄, under an image of Carl Sandburg): there are 2 kinds of writers, gardeners and architects. Hmmmm #cplf #csla2019
I need a word for when exhibitions are named innocuous things like "What is the Midwest?" and end up presenting very sharp, informative arguments -- in this case that the Midwest is a site of constant conquest and resource extraction. Also with the work at the #ChicagoArchitectureBiennial by @futurefirm and @amlc.umich with the American Indian Center and here, I now declare that no exhibition/writing on Chicago design & culture will be able to skim over its indigenous history. Including my own teaching. #ChicagoDesign #decolonize
Park McArthur at SAIC tonight. The presentation was surprising..for me quite challenging and I would guess the same for a lot of the audience, with a long form audio description of her work at the MoMA this year. There was a certain endurance involved in listening to the description - ultimately I found it to trouble the idea of access as seamless or boundless, but instead presented something challenging to an art school audience primed for the visual. I felt also that there was something of a message that her presence as a visiting artist, partly under the banner of our "Wellness Center," was not going to be a feel-good experience..more power to her on that front. Image description: first image is a brightly-lit Park, from below, on stage behind a black-draped table with two blue capped water bottles. Second is the empty stage while the audio played, with ASL interpreter to the side. #ParkMcarthur @saicpics
How things are made
  • Writing
  • Bio: Dr. Bess Williamson (she/hers)
  • Teaching
  • News
  • CV
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