Included in MOMA’s “Designing Modern Women” exhibition is a poster by Parsons Faculty Julia Gorton, designed in 1978 while she was a student at Parsons. Julia was a Communication Design major who focused much of her work on photographing, documenting, and designing for bands that were part of New York’s No Wave music scene. Most of her nights were spent at Max’s Kansas City and C.B.G.B.s, and the empty streets of downtown, walking home once the music was over.

As Assistant Professor of Communication Design and the current Director of AAS Graphic Design and Printmaking programs, Julia exhibits her punk rock, DIY sensibilities through the projects she engages her classes in, whether evoking a literal punk, DIY aesthetic in classes like History of Graphic Design and the Vantam Tokyo Collab, or through projects that communicate a DIY ethos of social good and community building, as is her Designing for Non-Profits class involvement with Aid for Aids, and her Graphic Design One class’ Sandy Relief Fundraiser.

Designing Modern Women 1890–1990

October 5, 2013–October 1, 2014

Architecture and Design Galleries, third floor

Modern design of the twentieth century was profoundly shaped and enhanced by the creativity of women—as muses of modernity and shapers of new ways of living, and as designers, patrons, performers and educators. This installation, drawn entirely from MoMA’s collection, celebrates the diversity and vitality of individual artists’ engagement in the modern world, from Loïe Fuller’s pulsating turn-of-the-century performances to April Greiman’s 1980s computer-generated graphics, at the vanguard of early digital design. Highlights include the first display of a newly conserved kitchen by Charlotte Perriand with Le Corbusier (1952) from the Unité d’Habitation housing project, furniture and designs by Lilly Reich, Eileen Gray, Eva Zeisel, Ray Eames, Lella Vignelli, and Denise Scott Brown; textiles by Anni Albers and Eszter Haraszty; ceramics by Lucy Rie; a display of 1960s psychedelic concert posters by graphic designer Bonnie Maclean, and a never-before-seen selection of posters and graphic material from the punk era.

Julia Gorton (L) and Juliet Kinchin, Curato (R)