Jonathan Adler

More than ever, design—and design-awareness—is influencing every aspect of our lives. Join designer Jonathan Adler and artist Allan Wexler in a wide-ranging discussion about the role of design in modern life in the panel discussion The Rite Stuff: Design and Modern Observance. The panel is next week, Thursday, October 22, 6:30 pm, and moderated by leading design critic Julie Lasky.

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This panel will consider how rites connected with birth, marriage, death, and seasonal celebrations have changed in light of contemporary attitudes toward community, family, and the environment. In what ways are we challenged to be both modern and traditional in the rituals we observe? What is design’s role in bringing these practices up to date?

Adler, who began his career as a potter using a wheel he purchased with Bar Mitzvah money, has been one of the country’s greatest popularizers of the mid-century modern aesthetic for a bright, punchy, geometrical sensibility for home décor. Adler’s whimsical ceramic pieces, from vases to figurines to menorahs, bring a playfulness and liberty to home design. That he was inspired in part by the bold modernist design of suburban Reform synagogues makes his practice highly unusual and ingenious.

Joining Adler is Allan Wexler, winner of the Leir Prize and a pioneering artist exploring the intersections of architecture and art. The panel is moderated by Julie Lasky, a brilliant design critic, author of an essay in the Reinventing Ritual catalogue, and the editor of the newly launched Change Observer website. Her insight into the new eco-consciousness in contemporary design, including Jewish ritual objects, is invaluable for us to understand where the community is going in the future. Finally, the curator Dorothy Twining Globus of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, will offer her insights on the intersection of design and daily life.