Armand-Albert Rateau, French, 1882-1938, Young-Quinlan Co. Christmas box, c. 1950 Lithographed paper, string, Modernism Collection, gift of Norwest Bank Minnesota

Holiday Traditions

Friday, November 26, 2004—Monday, January 17, 2005
Period Rooms, Bell Family Decorative Arts Corridor, and Purcell-Cutts House
Free Exhibition

Packages of all sorts have come a long way since the plain brown bundles depicted in Victorian Christmas scenes. Advances in construction, printing, and mechanization throughout the 20th century have resulted in graphic developments for the simple shopping bag and hatbox. They serve as portable billboards for the store, and once home, can live on as containers for keepsakes, often becoming keepsakes themselves. As department stores and boutiques increasingly consider packaging as an extension of their service and identity, they look to designers for more attractive wrappings. Artists such as Erté, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Frank Stella have accepted commissions to design shopping bags, many of them considered portable art by museums and collectors.

In the Twin Cities, such fashion-forward retailers as Young-Quinlan, Field-Schlick, and Dayton's invested considerable effort and imagination into their packaging. The Institute will feature these and other designs from local shops in the Bell Decorative Arts Court during this year's "Holiday Traditions" exhibition, on view in the Period Rooms and at the Purcell-Cutts house November 26, 2004, through January 2, 2005.

Costumed docents will offer tours from Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve. For information on tours, please see the calendar section or call (612) 870-3131.

Organized by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.