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Aesthetics of Hygiene, curated by Kelly S Turner, Graduate Curatorial Intern, examines how early twentieth-century Modernist architects subjected kitchens and bathrooms to intense scrutiny and reconfiguration. Viewed as vehicles for the reform of domestic environments, kitchens and bathrooms engage with larger cultural taboos concerning dirt, the body, and community.
Rarely seen historical drawings and period photographs from the Architecture and Design Collection and trade catalogues from the University Library's Department of Special Collections demonstrate how a hygiene aesthetic impacted the kitchen and bathroom designs of six Modernist architects--Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, Maynard Lyndon, Julius Ralph Davidson, Whitney Smith and Thornton Abell--working in and around Southern California between 1928-1955. Starting with architectural and plumbing trade catalogues that illustrate the turn-of-the-century hygienic ideal of domestic cleanliness based on a fear of the unsanitary kitchen and bathroom, this exhibition considers the Modernist conception of cleanliness based on order.