Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color
Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution
This exhibition is extended to March 17, 2019.
Saturated explores the elusive, complex phenomenon of color perception and how it has captivated artists, designers, scientists, and sages. Featuring over 190 objects spanning antiquity to the present from the extraordinary collections of Smithsonian Libraries and Cooper Hewitt, the exhibition reveals how designers apply the theories of the world's greatest color thinkers to bring order and excitement to the visual world.
More than three dozen magnificent and rare books from the Smithsonian Libraries are installed throughout the exhibition, emphasizing the ongoing theoretical and practical discourse on color. Illustrated with spheres, cones, grids, wheels, and other graphic means for organizing color's hues and harmonies, the works include texts written by designers, naturalists, and chemists, as well as some of the most important color treatises of the Enlightenment, such as Sir Isaac Newton's 1704 Opticks and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1810 Theory of Colors. Also on view, a very rare surviving volume of Jacob Christophe Le Blon's 1725 Coloritto, the first book to document the mixing of primary colors to create secondary colors that became the foundation of modern color printing.
To show how these findings have been realized and advanced by designers, objects from all four curatorial departments present a globally and stylistically diverse installation of iconic, experimental, and vernacular design. The works of color innovators, such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Massimo Vignelli, and Hella Jongerius, demonstrate design's continuing investigation of new materials, technologies, and techniques, while recent acquisitions for the collection point to future directions. Saturated also investigates color's relationship with music, camouflage, and advances in color reproduction, highlighting its importance to everything from philosophy to mass communication. Visually and intellectually stimulating, Saturated expands awareness of our deeply personal and rewarding relationship with color.
A selection of objects in the exhibition. View more objects.
Poster, The Miller Blues Band, 1967; Designed by Victor Moscoso (Spanish, active USA, b.1936); offset lithograph on white wove paper; 50.3 x 35.8 cm (19 13/16 x 14 1/8 in.); Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Leslie J. Schreyer; 1979-34-38; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution
Aryballos, 3rd–-4th century; blown and drawn glass; Overall: 9.8 x 6 cm (3 7/8 x 2 3/8 in.); 1958-26-3; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution
Poster, Specimen, 2008; Designed by Fanette Mellier (French, b. 1977); France; offset lithograph on paper; 175 x 118.6 cm (5 ft. 8 7/8 in. x 46 11/16 in.); Gift of Fanette Mellier; 2013-18-1 Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution
Color Decoded: The Textiles of Richard Landis
In conjunction with Saturated, an exhibition of the recent acquisition of six of the master weaver and colorist's most important works, installed together with three process drawings and 13 more of Landis's textiles; all produced between 1967 and 1995. Landis's double-cloth textiles are complex systems of closely related full-tones and half-tones of color, organized into abstract geometries of endless variation. Learn more about Color Decoded.
Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color is made possible in part by support from the August Heckscher Exhibition Fund, Judy Francis Zankel, PeclersParis, and The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.
The Saturated Blog series
RARITY OF COLOR HARMONY
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. Today's post was originally published on February 23, 2015. A significant acquisition to the Cooper Hewitt Library's special collections in 2014 was Édouard Guichard's Die Harmonie der...
Read Time
Jennifer Cohlman Bracchi
Through Anaglyph-Colored Glasses
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. Bloom is a 3-D or anaglyph wallpaper designed by LuzElena Wood as part of the DEEP 3D Wallpaper Project created by Architect Sarah Strauss in partnership with...
Kara Nichols
Bright Lights, Big City
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This post was originally published on December 12, 2014. Grethe Sørenson's digitally woven hanging Rush Hour 2/ Shanghai is part of her Traces of Light series, created...
Imperfect Beauty
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color, Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This post was originally published November 8, 2012. Visionary, prophetic, subversive, and marginal all describe the Italian architect and designer, Gaetano Pesce, whose innovative experiments with materials and production methods transform...
Cara McCarty
The Chemistry of Color
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. Farbmesstafel (1939) by German chemist and color theorist, Wilhelm Ostwald, is a color table, which displays a spectrum of brilliant hues based on his harmonious...
Aesthetics of the Color Plotter
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. Today's post was originally published on October 29th, 2016. A cube split into eight floating blocks, situated in isometric perspective. Each block comprised of 49...
Lisa Adang
Wilde Wall
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color, Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This vividly striking sidewall was created by Osborne & Little, a leading name in British fabric and wallpaper designs. Founded in 1968 by Sir Peter Osborne, the 17th Baronet of Ballentaylor,...
A Fabric with a Touch of Tomorrow
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color, Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This post was originally published September 4, 2012. America, 1957. Eisenhower was the President. Elvis was "the King." And Ford Motor Company introduced its new 1957 automobiles, a "new kind...
Maleyne Syracuse
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Friday, May 11 2018 through Sunday, March 17 2019
View All Exhibition Objects
View and print exhibition labels; large print available.
Featured Image: Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution