Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum: Friday, 19 September 2008

Birth of the Cool Public Opening, 7-9 pm
The opening celebration will feature a live jazz band performing Miles Davis's seminal album Birth of the Cool, a martini bar, and a hep 50s vibe.

September 19, 2008 to January 5, 2009

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury takes a look at the broad cultural zeitgeist of "cool" that informed the visual, graphic, and decorative arts, furniture, architecture, music, and film produced in Southern California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The exhibition, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, includes a jazz lounge; a media bar with film, animation, and television programming; a period art gallery of hard-edge abstract paintings; selections of art, architectural, and documentary photography; and an interactive timeline that presents a snapshot of California, national, and international culture and history of that era.Birth of the Cool examines the dynamic community of artists who overlapped and interacted in Southern California at midcentury--Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Charles and Ray Eames, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Helen Lundeberg, and others who played a seminal role in the development of the iconic high modernist style.