Kent State University Museum: Designing Domesticity

Exhibition

Designing Domesticity:Decorating the American Home Since 1876
Broadbent Gallery, December 5, 2001, to November 17, 2002
Dr. Shirley Wajda and Dr. Terrence L. Uber Guest Curators

The Millennial Mini Mansion
2001

The prosperity of the last decades of the twentieth century created what some critics have dubbed "The New Gilded Age"-long on style but short on substance, dependent on the wealth generated in the "New New Economy" of "high tech," Wall Street stock trading, and real estate. As Baby Boomers entered middle age, they experienced the contradiction between the rebellious and utopian beliefs of their youth, and their desire for the comfort of traditional values, financial security, and material possessions.
The houses that Boomers have chosen to build embody this contradiction in values. These "McMansions," so dubbed by critics who see only the waste of conspicuous consumption in "gentrified" suburban enclaves, offer their owners the means by which to balance of work and play, sociability and privacy, community and independence. The alternative lifestyle of 1960s communes, for example, is incorporated in the novel "Great Room." Offering a large, open space in which to work while others play, share food preparation and consumption, or gather in front of an entertainment center, the Great Room represents the privatization of communalism. Located at the back of the house, this multipurpose space offers sanctuary, what trend predictor Faith Popcorn dubbed "cocooning."