Events
The Past is Always Present: Digital Witness—Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film
with Staci Steinberger
Go behind the scenes with the co-curator of LACMA’s exhibition, an interdisciplinary show featuring several items from Letterform Archive.
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Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world. The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation and communication. The recent exhibition Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art examined the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Exhibition co-curator Staci Steinberger will discuss this transformation in graphic design, the experience of organizing an interdisciplinary design exhibition, and the role of museums in contextualizing graphic design within a broader art and design history.
The Past is Always Present lecture series is part of The 10th Anniversary Symposium celebrating ten years of Letterform Archive.
This event will be recorded. Please register for the event and you will receive an email when the video is available.
Installation photograph: Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Sep. 15, 2024–July 13, 2025, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
Staci Steinberger
Staci Steinberger is a Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at LACMA. A specialist in modern and contemporary design and craft, Steinberger joined the curatorial team in 2009. Since 2014, she has overseen the museum’s interdepartmental initiative to collect and exhibit graphic design. She has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions at the museum, including Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography and Film (2024-25) with Britt Salvesen, “What Would You Say?”: Activist Graphics from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2022-23), West of Modernism: California Graphic Design, 1975–1995 (2018-19), Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915–1985 with Wendy Kaplan (2017-18), Ed Fella: Free Work in Due Time (2017), Awazu Kiyoshi, Graphic Design: Summoning the Outdated with Hollis Goodall (2016-17), Vitality of New Forms: Designs by Alvin Lustig and Elaine Lustig Cohen (2015-16), and Jack Stauffacher: Typographic Experiments (2013). She has contributed to several additional publications including California Design, 1930–1965: Living in A Modern Way (2011), To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City (2015), Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 (2023), and Only on Saturday: The Wood Type Prints of Jack Stauffacher (2023).
