Opening Day Conversation with Author Thomas Dyja, The Third Coast

Join us for the Opening Celebration of the exhibition Up Is Down: Mid-century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio.

"Improvisation, experimentation, social justice: all these things form the spine of what comes out of Chicago” – Thomas Dyja

 In the 1950s, Chicago-based design firm Goldsholl and Associates made a name for itself with innovative "designs-in-film." Headed by Morton and Millie Goldsholl, the studio produced artistically-inspired television spots, films, trademarks, and print advertisements for international corporations like Kimberly-Clark, Motorola, and 7-Up.  Combining Bauhaus-influenced aesthetics with commercial advertising success, the firm exemplified the way in which Chicago served as the nation’s design capital and a crucial testing ground for ideas connecting art, industry, design, and film.

Thomas Dyja, third-generation Chicagoan and author of the award-winning Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, will discuss why Chicago was fertile ground for the Goldsholls’ work— and explore the mid-century circumstances that united culture and industry across the city.  In conversation with Dyja, exhibition co-curators Amy Beste and Corinne Granof will share insight into the groundbreaking work of the Goldsholl Associates, tracing its artistic influences, including those of artist and designer László Moholy-Nagy, as well as the Firms’ lasting design legacy.

Top image: Millie Goldsholl, Morton Goldsholl, Wayne Boyer, Larry Janiak, and Dick Marx, still from Kimberly-Clark Corporation Faces and Fortunes, 1959, 16mm film, 12:48 minutes. Mort and Millie Goldsholl Collection, 1942–1980, Chicago Film Archives.