This spring, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is hosting Electrifying Design: A Century of Lighting, a show looking at the history of lighting design around the world over the past century. It is the first large-scale exhibition in the U.S. to examine lighting design as a catalyst for technological and artistic innovation.

Since the late 19th century, electric lighting and its accompanying fixtures have become salient features in both domestic and urban life. Finding a lighting fixture for any room is not so much about satisfying a need, but rather a conscious aesthetic choice. Electrifying Design examines lighting as a crucial part of modern and contemporary design practices through a time line of the field’s development. The exhibition examines lighting through three themes (Typologies, The Bulb, and Quality of Light) chosen to reflect function, design, and effect.

Electrifying Design was curated by Cindi Strauss, curator of decorative arts, craft, and design at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Sarah Schleuning, senior curator of decorative arts and design at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Keren Dillard