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Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000 Juliet Kinchin and Aidan O'Connor New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012. Images, credits, notes, index, further reading. 263 pp. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780870708268
Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000, by curator Juliet Kinchin and curatorial assistant Aidan O'Connor and published by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), accompanies the ambitious and introspective exhibition of the same title that opened at MOMA in New York 2012. This book resembles other coffeetable books-beautiful color and blackand-white photographs fill the pages and the content presents a broad survey of the subject-and proves a noteworthy source for general readers interested in learning more about the convergence of twentiethcentury material culture and childhood.
MOMA describes Century of the Child as an overview of the "modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive design thinking." The curators found inspiration in Swedish reformer and social theorist Ellen Key's 1909 book of the same title, in which she proclaimed that the recognition of children's needs would define social, political, psychological, and aesthetic reform. Key also proclaimed that the spaces a child occupies contributes significantly to her emotional and physical well-being. Kinchin and O'Connor's catalog complements the MOMA exhibit and documents that many modernists did, indeed, produce innovative and...