CRY BABY
Commercial photographer Jill Greenberg has captured the exquisite emotional distress of crying babies and enlarged them (43 x 50 inches) for an exhibition at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles. Open until May 27, End Time is being touted as a politically charged exhibition and yet the only thing political about these inflated images of distraught, bare-shouldered children are the pretentious titles: “Shock and Awe” and “Four More Years,” among others. It’s one thing to manipulate images digitally and to refuse to discuss the techniques applied for fear of people copying one’s work (that’s her prerogative), but quite another to try to sell it as a legitimate political statement based on calculated captions. Like her commercial work, these images are dramatic and highly stylized.
www.paulkopeikingallery.com, www.manipulator.com

THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS
The 20th-century phenomenon of streamlined design welcomed a shiny cynosure when a Burlington Railroad train named after the Greek god of the west wind, Zephyr, pulled into Chicago for the 1934 World’s Fair. Not only did the passenger train succeed in cutting all speed records in half—making the trip from Denver in 13 hours, 5 minutes—but it also looked the glamorous part with its sleek steel exterior. The Zephyr’s futuristic detailing appealed to the hungry heart of a nation undergoing an economic Depression and approaching a World War—and whistled at the birth of American consumerism. Soon everything was being redesigned to look as if it were racing through time: from the typewriter in the office to the torpedo-shaped power drills in the garage. Today, 180 objects representing the best American Streamlined Design is on view at The Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan until June 11. (Most objects are drawn from The Eric Brill Collection, which was donated recently to The Liliane and David M. Stewart Program for Modern Design in Montreal, sponsor of the exhibition.)www.bgc.bard.edu

SPRING CLEANING
The exceptional European manufacturer of industrial design Normann Copenhagen is releasing three new products this spring. Boris Berlin and Poul Christiansen of Danish Komplot Design hope their “Pot,” a deceptive flowerpot made out of rubber which holds only one flower, will replace the traditional dining room centerpiece this year. And because New York-based Karim Rashid believes ordinary objects like hangers and piggybanks don’t get the attention they deserve, he’s designed his own. Like sand in an hourglass, see coins drop into his perky plastic piggybank, “Time is Money.” Or, reorganize the closet with his lightweight hanger “Orgo.” Still, it’s not his most progressive work—that’s on display. His first one-man show, Pink, White, and Rashid All Over, is at the Price Tower Arts Center in Bartlesville, Okla., until Sept. 17.
www.normann-copenhagen.com, www.pricetower.org

GEHRY JEWELRY
Tiffany & Co. is unveiling a new line of jewelry designed by Frank Gehry. And while Gehry has a proven track record for producing compelling, unconventional forms in different idioms (the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Chiat\Day Building in Venice, Calif.), The Gehry Collection for Tiffany doesn’t push the boundaries of jewelry design. He’s working with new materials such as pernambuco wood and cocholong stone, but his familiar curvaceous structures seem flat in the smaller scale. His pendant, “Fish,” is reminiscent of Elsa Peretti’s trademark “Teardrop,” also for Tiffany. So while the merchandise might be “on brand” for Tiffany, it appears contrary to his history of innovative design. The Gehry Collection is making its debut at select Tiffany & Co. stores in the U.S. and Japan, with other Asia and Europe locations launching in the fall.
www.tiffany.com