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rfmcdonaldAds for the exhibit IKEA Then & Now, running at the Design Exchange downtown between the 21st and the 30th of this month, kept appearing on my Facebook feed. Why not go? It was free, after all, and the Financial District is always fun to roam around. The exhibit's hashtag #ikeacan40 beckoned, and so, Thursday night, I went.
The exhibit heavily plays up the origins of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad in the southern Swedish province of Småland, described in the exhibit as a poor but frugal region in a country that was rapidly developing. Making good things inexpensively, the exhibit had it, was IKEA's key to global success. That, and a certain amount of cosmopolitanism: Kamprad apparently picked "IKEA" because the phrase sounded French to him.
We exhibit-goers got to see samples of some of IKEA's many different manufactured goods.
One element of the exhibit I liked were the different model rooms staged in different decades' styles, from the 1970s to the present.
I did take the chance to get some photographic evidence of my presence.
I also jumped in the ball pit, full of globes in Swedish blue and yellow.
The exhibit heavily plays up the origins of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad in the southern Swedish province of Småland, described in the exhibit as a poor but frugal region in a country that was rapidly developing. Making good things inexpensively, the exhibit had it, was IKEA's key to global success. That, and a certain amount of cosmopolitanism: Kamprad apparently picked "IKEA" because the phrase sounded French to him.
We exhibit-goers got to see samples of some of IKEA's many different manufactured goods.
One element of the exhibit I liked were the different model rooms staged in different decades' styles, from the 1970s to the present.
I did take the chance to get some photographic evidence of my presence.
I also jumped in the ball pit, full of globes in Swedish blue and yellow.
